Archives for November 2011

Frookie Speaks Out: STAT.US Debut Rocks Sports Information Industry

 

 

 

 

 

In a blockbuster move, Automated Insights Inc. has launched STAT.US, which allows sports fans to pick a favorite team or player and receive automated updates on their performance.

The website enables the average Twitter sports fan to quickly become a power user, and will drive traffic to the emerging StatSheet sports information network.

Make no mistake:

MobileSportsReport expects STAT.US to emerge as a killer application of Twitter in sports within a year, elevating the average sports fan into a mobile device power user.

In fact, STAT.US‘ parent company is emerging as odds-on favorite to lead the convergence of sports viewing, sports information and mobile device ubiquity.

In short, today’s launch of STAT.US, when coupled with the rest of Automated Insights’ offerings, have the potential to tilt the sports information industry on its axis.

STAT.US Explained

Sample of StatSheet's Automated Sports Content -- Powerful Stuff

In essence, STAT.US is the consumer user interface to a sports information network that Automated Insights has built using Twitter.

Automated Insights has created the Twitter accounts that feed into STAT.US, and will be responsible for updating those accounts, including game-day stats that match or exceed the most robust offerings currently available to Fantasy team owners.

Moreover, links featured on STAT.US will drive people to StatSheet content, which uses artificial intelligence to craft stories about live sporting events, and presents sophisticated statistical data in dazzling ways.

Automated Insights COO Scott Frederick

“We turn data into automated content,” Automated Insights COO Scott Frederick told Mobile Sports Report. “”We just want smarter more passionate fans.”

Easy to Use Interface

The prime reason STAT.US is such a powerful idea is because it is easy to use.

Once you go to STAT.US, you simply provide your Twitter log-in information, and then name NFL, NBA, MLB players or teams, or favorite NCAA Basketball or NCAA Basketball teams. From within the STAT.US domain, your selections are automatically added to your Twitter stream, and also presented through the STAT.US portal. Each STAT.US data stream is managed on Twitter by StatSheet.com, meaning that StatSheet’s real-time information can be promoted throughout a live sporting event via tiny URLs.

Making Money, Raising Money

Automated Insights makes no bones about its plans to monetize the STAT.US service.  Since those Twitter accounts feed into STAT.US, and a percentage of fans will opt to receive information through the STAT.US portal, Automated Insights Inc. will own the advertising, marketing and e-commerce opportunities that go along with the captured audience. Today, the website has AdChoices placed on every page. That’s simply a signal that it plans to monetize the website in more meaningful ways once a user base is established, and familiarizes consumers with the idea that they will receive marketing messages along with information services.

As of Nov. 30, greater than 250,000 fans were actively using the network, according to an email from the company.

Automated Insights CEO Robbie Allen

Automated Insights has had no trouble raising money to pursue its goals.

In 2010, it raised $1.3 million in funding, and got an additional investment of $4.0 million from Court Square Ventures and OCA Ventures in September.

The history, the team

Automated Insights and STAT.US is the brainchild of former Cisco engineer Robbie Allen, who figured out that the Twitter lists functions could be easily leveraged to provide NFL, college and NBA fans with statistical analysis, charts and stats tailored to specific players. Others on the Automated Insights team are also impressive, including former Valhalla Partners venture capitalist Frederick, who will create business opportunity for the company, VP Operations & Finance Adam Smith and VP of Product Engineering Joe Procopio.

The Big Picture

Sports is the tip of the iceberg for Automated Insights. Eventually, it will drive its business model into every vertical that has consumers interested in real-time data, including financial services. In so doing, it will compete with everyone from Bloomberg News Service to the local newspaper. That Automated Insights incursion begins with sports data underscores the desirable demographic sports attracts, as well as the natural fit between the live sports viewing experience and real-time information accessed through mobile devices.

Automated Insights has embarked upon a game-changing strategy in the information-services industry, and if Stat.US and other content offerings successfully grows a large user base in the year ahead, it won’t be stopped in the sports vertical.

MobileSportsReport Exclusive: OneUP Football Connect Return Rate Looks Like a Hit

OneUP Games has a unique spin on sports social media gaming. Basically, it doesn’t want to try to figure out the most compelling experience all by itself. Instead, OneUP will deliver to the market an open Application Programming Interface (API), which will allow people to change the data feed that drives a game. Fantasy sports commissioners and sports promoters will have the means to create games tuned to the leagues they lead and the teams they represent.

That’s a dramatically different strategy than we’ve seen so far, as numerous companies look for ways to tap into the evolving viewing habits of sports fans. To date, most sports social media gaming companies have developed a gaming experience in house, and then built black-box technology that delivers the game to fans. If the game is compelling enough, the developer has a hit on its hands. If its not, there is nowhere for the company to go but back to the drawing board, often with millions in venture capital burned up.

To show off its technology, OneUP Games has indeed gone live with a couple of in-house designed games, including the just-released version 1.2 of Football Connect, which is described as a bingo-type social game based on live NFL games. But OneUP isn’t saying that’s the end of the story. Available for iPhones and iPads at the App Store, nearly 10,000 people are currently playing Football Connect, and downloads are increasing at a 400 percent week-over-week pace. But Football Connect, and its predecessor Baseball Connect, are really showcases for the OneUP API.

Here’s OneUP’s description of Football Connect:

“Players start with random digital game cards that contain the many different plays that happen during Football games, such as touchdowns, first downs, interceptions, fumbles, etc. Players use strategy and game knowledge to earn more points by swapping the events with a specific player event (e.g. Aaron Rodgers TD pass) or they can play it safe and pick the team (Packers TD). When a row or “connect” is unlocked by successfully predicting a series of events, the player earns points while competing against friends.”

It may be just a showcase, but there are indications that OneUP Games could have a hit on its hands. Return play for Football Connect exceeds 50 percent.  That far outshines the return play rate of about 19 percent to 20 percent that most social game developers are experiencing, according to MobileSportsReport research.

OneUP Games is one of several developers looking to define the category of sports social media games tied to live sports events. Earlier, GiveMojo.com launched its college football-centric game, which creates a gamespace within a Twitter stream. Predictive gaming company GameSlam raised millions several months ago and started out as a very aggressive player, but it has since pulled back to rework its strategy. PrePlay Sports, like GameSlam, is focused on predictive gaming, which by definition calls on sports fans to predict upcoming plays in a live sporting event in order to win.

Predictive gaming has flaws. It often proves too much work to appeal to a mass audience. In fact, when predictive gaming platforms were released on proprietary systems at sports bars more than a decade ago, a hard-core following gravitated to the game, but not the widespread audience needed to make it a viable business. The fact is, most people watching a sporting event want to be engaged, but also want to enjoy the game and the people they are with. That’s why OneUP Games

To date, there is no clear market leader among  all companies trying to join social media and live sports, but OneUP’s return rate indicates that it may be a force to be reckoned with as the market shakes out.

OneUP CEO Daren Trousdell

OneUP Games‘ API strategy has a terrific wrinkle. The company plans to release its open API early in 2012, OneUP CEO Daren Trousdell confirmed to MobileSportsReport. This will allow third-party developers to integrate the application into other platforms or develop customized social-media experiences around games of their choosing.

In other words, the sports information director of a Triple A baseball team could create a customized application tuned to his team’s players and a select opponent, and give away prizes to whatever fan in attendance racks up the most points by predicting what is about to happen next. This is the first time a sports social media game developer has announced plans to release an open API, according to Mobile Sports Report research. OneUp has dubbed that strategy “gamification.”

Trousdell, who heads the six-person OneUP Games, is a former digital marketing executive, who sold his firm Mindblossom to Isobar three years ago.  Trousdell sees the open API as competitive advantage few in the sports social media space can match.

“It means we can scale our ideas, and produce hundreds of different versions of a game without re-architecting (server) systems or the (interface),” said Trousdell.

For more about Trousdell, StartUp Beat published an interview with him in August. Trousdell’s personal website is also worth a look.

Facebook, Twitter in Death Match Over Sports Fans’ Souls

If Facebook bought Twitter, sports fans would rejoice.

Through such a fantasy merger, there’d be only one “identification service” to worry about when you wanted to broadcast your sports opinions to the world. That would be a welcome relief from the two-headed monster that now rules the kingdom of sports smack, the beast with tweets on one side and Facebook posts on the other. The big question is whether sports fans will continue to feed both monsters, or whether one will prevail, like Highlander, to rule them all.

Winning the ID Game

Before we get too deep into bad movie cliches, it’s worthwhile to take a small step back and wonder at how quickly Facebook and Twitter have basically won the battle for user identification, or authentication. In the days of Grampa Internet, individual sites would try to get readers to “log in” or “register” with unique passwords and IDs. That led to a frustrating era, just now ending, of having to remember multiple screen names, logins and places to track conversations.

Then came Facebook and Twitter, who after a short while made the smart move of making users’ identifying features portable — meaning you could use your Facebook or Twitter screen persona to log in to web sites and blogs, instead of having to remember each site’s unique ID. Boom, game over. If you are an active sports commenter, you are probably already on Facebook and Twitter and spend little time anywhere else.

Though ESPN still requires you to have a site-specific login to comment on their story “conversation” sites, it’s easy to see where the worldwide leader is going, with constant beckonings to “tweet us your questions” to be answered on talk shows, and with an unending parade of Facebook polls and comment come-ons. It’s pretty amazing that two startups like Facebook and Twitter could completely trash the user-ID-accumulation schemes cooked up by major media properties since the web began. What might be more compelling is the coming clash between the two new titans, who each have attributes that make them more compelling to sports opinionators, depending upon the situation.

Twitter: Fast, fun and the athlete’s domain

Though by far the smaller of the two services, Twitter is the new darling of the sports world, in no small part because it has become the favorite platform for pro athletes. Unlike a website, a blog or even a Facebook page, a Twitter account needs only some short thoughts and a smartphone — two things that are front and center in the pro athlete’s world of 2011.

In its short life Twitter has changed the face of many facets of media production, including coverage of wars and revolutions. In the less-meaningful but not less-followed world of sports, Twitter has become the de facto news wire of the sporting world, with teams, athletes, fans and followers all adding to and taking away from the information stream.

For the average fan, Twitter is like a fire hose of comments and information that never slows down, and is as wide and diverse as who you choose to follow. From a commenter standpoint there is the problem of having to make your voice heard in the crowd, but by just signing up and tweeting you still have a chance to see your name or fan-tastic psuedonym flashed on the ESPN screen. The low barrier to entry and instant gratification make Twitter the first choice for a lot of new Internet sports enthusiasts.

Facebook: Best for long opinions, monetization

In terms of really building an online social presence, however, nothing beats Facebook, especially when it comes to easily finding a home for photos, videos, long opinions and opportunities to build a business. For teams, athletes, vendors and sponsors in the field, a Facebook page is a no-brainer as it gives easy access to the hundreds of millions of folks who already have a Facebook ID.

For the average sports fan Facebook is probably a lot easier to understand than Twitter, and the post/comments structure lends itself to longer “conversations” on a single topic or event. The recent integration of Facebook comments under blog posts is a step toward Facebook’s plan of social-activity domination: Simply put, the service wants to make it easy for you to record your every thought, “Like” and observation in some form that can be embedded inside a Facebook wrapper.

And by allowing integration of applications and even stores on Facebook pages, the service is equally attractive to teams, vendors and sponsors who want to extract dollars from the multitudes of fans. The commerce-friendly platform is what gives Facebook the sporting edge right now, but Twitter is gaining ground quickly, thanks to its Google-like ease of use.

Who Wins? Or do they both survive?

Right now, connected sports fans as well as athletes, teams, schools, advertisers and vendors in the sports-fan space all are most likely active on both services, depending on the time of day or situation. While much of the live commenting action has moved to Twitter thanks to its instant-publishing stream of thought, the more leisurely searches for information and interaction still take place on websites, blogs or Facebook pages, meaning that you can’t live on simply one or the other right now.

While that means there is still the headache of “do I post to Twitter or Facebook,” there remains the possibility of some future integration, perhaps by a business arrangement once both firms go public as is widely expected. Though there do exist services and techno-solutions that will replicate your Facebook posts onto Twitter and vice versa, the different styles of communication on either platform make such services an inelegant compromise at best. Will those differing styles keep the beast’s two heads alive indefinitely, or will one succeed in chewing through the other’s throat? Whichever way it goes, it will be a fun movie to watch play out over the near term future.

Will MLB’s New Deal Kill or Enhance Players’ Access to Social Media?

Just catching up on Major League Baseball’s off-season news prior to the hot stove league heating up with the arrival of the Winter Meetings and I came upon an interesting piece in Baseball Nation about a change in social media usage in baseball.

It pointed out that there is a single line in the new collective bargaining agreement that says “All players will be subject to a policy governing the use of Social Media.” That is it, no details and no policy.

I have no issue with baseball, or any sport, having a set of guidelines for the athletes to follow in regards to social media. For instance you probably do not want people Tweeting shower scenes, which has already happened in basketball. Or sending images of their junk, which has (purportedly) happened in the NFL.

The question is will MLB simply move its rules for team employees to now also cover players or will it create a new set of guidelines, one that might be designed to always put MLB in a good light?

The new players’ policy is so short it is hard to give it the title of policy, but the open-ended nature of it does give you reason to pause. Currently baseball, and for that matter most pro sports, are pretty open about the use of Facebook, Twitter and other forms of social media as a tool that its players can more directly with the fans. Outside of outlawing tweets from the free-throw line or the line of scrimmage, it’s pretty much an open game.

And rightly so. Curt Schilling has had the blog 38 Pitches for years where he posts his opinions and people can chime in. That seems almost old school (yes I know he also Tweets and uses the two for different purposes) now with the ability to follow players’ feelings and opinions in almost real time. A quick look at the web site tweeting-athletes shows the huge number of players from around the globe and around sports that are active at some level in tweeting.

Fans enjoy hearing directly from players. It may not be the most insightful sometimes, but it is often colorful and much more interesting than the canned quotes that players tend to give to live broadcasters.
I see the need for rules and a cooling off period, so that in the heat of the moment a player does not post something that he and possible his team, will regret, but I worry about leagues taking it too far.

The NFL feels no qualms about fining coaches for criticizing refs even when everybody in America has seen the replay that shows how wrong the ref was on a play. Let’s not even talk about fining people for wearing the wrong color cleats. It really is earning its title as the No Fun League. The NBA has been increasingly worried about its image over the last decade and has dictated how players will dress. However they both do seem to have an open mind on the topic of social media.

The existing rules for MLB employees and contractors can be found here– and it is pretty much what you would expect it to be: don’t pretend you are speaking for MLB, no confidential information, no using logos and property of the league and so on.

I think baseball, and all sports, need to embrace social media as an adjunct to marketing and advertising efforts. What could be better than players directly accessing fans? I guess if the players are unhappy and the team is poorly run bad things can happen, but on the whole I think the net results will be positive.

#HAILSTATE Eggs on Mississippi State Tweeters

#Hailstate appeared in one end zone during Mississippi State's grudge match with Ole Miss

Mississippi State used a Twitter hashtag in its end zone during its annual Egg Bowl game versus Ole Miss on Saturday, and the results were as good as its 31-3 victory over its cross state rivals.

The use of the #Hailstate hash tag, placed in the north end zone at the game, spurred continued Twitter activity through Nov. 28, with some fans suggesting use of #Hailstate on helmets and uniforms in future games.

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban also approved, according to a Mashable report.

“It’s a fun way to involve social media at the game, and to TV viewers it’s going to stir up some emotions between both teams,” Cuban said.

Cuban said he would consider using a similar approach at Dallas Mavericks games, but NBA licensing rules would be a significant hurdle for Cuban to clear before he could make good on that promise.

Club de Fútbol Jaguares de Chiapas' jerseys feature player's handles in the same color scheme and font as Twitter

Although we’ll believe Cuban when we see something like @the_real-dirk on the back of Dirk Nowitzki’s jersey, the use of Twitter hashtags is indeed an emerging trend at sporting events. Mississippi State’s #Hailstate comes fewer than three weeks after Mexican premiere division soccer team Club de Fútbol Jaguares de Chiapas replaced players’ names with their Twitter handles on the back of team jerseys.

In the United States, this Twitter-tactic is most likely to receive widespread use at the high-school level, where school administrators have greater latitude over what they put on playing fields. It is a solid way to indelibly etch in the minds of attendees that an active Twitter stream is available. Increased fan engagement in high-school and minor college sporting events benefits such blogging sites as BleacherReport.com and SBNation.com because they are capable of covering high school and minor college teams better than ESPN, CBS Sports, Fox Sports and others, who all have to focus on national stories to maintain interest in the major college and professional sporting events they pay hundreds of millions of dollars to broadcast.

Ironically, Mississippi State is one of the least Twitter-savvy college football programs, counting only 10,663 followers for @mstateathletics. In addition, the Twitter handle @hailstate is independently run, and has just 640 followers.  Here’s @hailstate retweeting  a far-more-widely-followed Ole Miss commentary minutes before this blog post was published on MobileSportsReport:

The endzone where your player scratched out an obscenity? RT @ Dear State, you look dumb as shit hashtagging your endzone.

@hailstate

hailstate

Mobile Sports Reports Monday TechWatch: An Android Rebuttal

Social Games Developer gets $12.5 million investment
SNS Plus, a 3-year-old developer of games that run on social media sites has just received an influx of funding amounting to $12.5 million from WI Harper, a Chinese VC, and Matrix Partners. SNS focuses on developing for Facebook with 60 games already available on that platform and an additional 15 games on a variety of others including Friendster, Zingme and Apple’s iOS. The company currently focuses on the Asian market and has offices in China, Taiwan and Thailand.

Android apps revenue trails iOS- Wait until next year!
Last week we noted that a study be market research firm Piper Jaffray said that Apple iOS app developers were racking in the funds while their counterparts in the Android space were just getting crumbs.

Now Inside Mobile Apps has refuted the estimate claiming that it is flawed. In particular it notes that free apps have a strong revenue generating potential by in-app sales. While we don’t track this thing, it seemed at the time that Piper Jaffray’s estimates were too low. It will be interesting to follow this space as the analysts start to develop real tools that can provide developers with the information they need to profitably allocate their resources.

Panasonic’s US Android plans: Someday?
It looks like Panasonic Mobile Communications Co. will be bringing a lineup of smartphones to Europe as it seeks to establish itself as a player in the Android-powered smartphone space. According to a report from the Nikkei that was forwarded by Reuters the company seeks to sell 7.5 million phones in that market, half of its output, but not until 2015.

It will look at further expansion down the road into the US and additional Asian markets. The company dropped out of all but its own domestic mobile phone space in 2005 due to a variety of issues including tough price competition.

Apple dumping Samsung LCDs?
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Apple is moving to a new partner for the displays in its forthcoming next generation iPads. The company will be moving from Samsung Electronics, a company it has partnered with in the display space for some time.

The report, well actually more of a rumor, claims that the LCDs will come from Sharp and that Apple is also investing an undisclosed sum in Sharp’s panel manufacturing facilities in Japan.

This seems to be a trend by Apple and you have to wonder if it has issues with Samsung? It was reported in September that it was moving away from using Samsung memory components. Earlier this year it moved away from using Samsung’s manufacturing for its processors that power its devices. Think that the patent disputes between the two have any impact on these decisions?

Did Apple products really account for 10 percent of Black Friday online sales?
A story coming out from electronista, citing a report from Coremetrics, an IBM company, claims that Apple mobile products accounted for approximately 10.2 percent of all online sales on Black Friday this year, while rival Android products only accounted for 4.1 percent.

At first look I took this to mean that Apple had a huge surge in sales of its products, which did have a number of sales last week, but what the piece means is that customers using those platforms made 10.2 percent of all purchases.

With Android phones extending their market share lead over Apple’s on a daily basis I found this to be a bit odd. Also the linked to report, while listed for 2011 was actually from 2010. Maybe I just could not get the latest report?

Are Android phones the breeding ground for viruses?
An interesting take on the reason that suddenly we seem to be inundated with alerts that your phone OS, especially Android, is rife with viruses and that you need the latest and greatest anti-virus software to ensure that your every Tweet, text and e-mail is safe.

According to ITWire it is all a conspiracy plot between Intel, its wholly owned subsidiary McAfee and Microsoft. Ok that may be an exaggeration but the piece does throw it out there. Of course as we noted in an earlier brief Google says all of the news of the rise of a new generation of malware is all garbage.

Apple rumor of the week.
Apple is working on a television that understands when you yell at it. Great, mine will explode every football and baseball season, who needs to buy two sets a year. It will also understand gestures. Still don’t see this as a positive. Now if it could cut out the ads I would be a happy camper.

Have a product that will be on display at the upcoming CES show and think we should know about it? Drop us a line and let us know.

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