Fans of the Boise State Broncos and the TCU Horned Frogs will get a chance to play a sports social media game that’s equal parts Twitter and Zynga today. Called GiveMojo, fans of the bitter BCS rivals will square off against each other in an organized, live “smack stream” gaming environment. Boise State versus TCU marks the biggest blitz to date to get the game to go viral.
Fans who sign up for GiveMojo accounts get a chance to participate for free, and score points for either the Broncos or the Horned Frogs depending on the quality of their comments. At 8:30 am, Boise State led TCU by a 146-120 score with nine hours left to go in the game.
Four other college football games are also featured on GiveMojo today:
- OSU Cowboys versus Texas Tech
- Auburn Tigers versus Georgia Bulldogs
- Alabama Crimson Tide versus Mississippi State Bulldogs
- Oregon Ducks versus Stanford Cardinal
Based in Boise, Idaho, GiveMojo has built excitement around other games, most notably Sept. 17’s Auburn versus Clemson rivalry, but Saturday’s Boise State versus TCU game is backed with Facebook advertising and local media efforts in Boise State and TCU markets.
In the real-world college football season, Boise State is undefeated, and today’s game versus TCU is considered its last significant test to a perfect season.
Optimized for mobile Web browsers, GiveMojo is significant because it tests whether aggregating fans interested in the same sporting event in a gaming environment provides enough value to capture large audiences, and bring those audiences back on a regular basis.
Because GiveMojo draws in comments from Twitter, sports fans get a chance to watch what people are saying about the game in the larger sports social media universe without running continuous searches or setting up TweetDeck or a similar application. GiveMojo is designed to foster a passionate conversation about a live event in a game space, and the Boise State versus TCU game measures up as the best example to date of the concept in action.
GiveMojo is optimized for mobile Web browsers. Native Android and iOS 5.0.1 applications are scheduled for release in the first quarter of 2012.
It’s Boise State 238, TCU 211 at half
Is it just me or is Mojo repeating entries on its home page? Is that just for the non-signed-in view?
FWIW, Mojo has a long way to go to catch ESPN… the “conversations” section for this game over on ESPN.com is adding posts so fast you basically can’t watch it live. Looks like thousands of posts. But that is probably/mainly people at computers watching on TV. Be interesting to see if the live/mobile audience segregates.
And, the Mojo posters are nicer. For now.
I signed into Give Mojo, and participated in a game. I think the repeats are often Hi-5s to create more points.
MobileSportsReport will have more on Give Mojo’s strategy this week, but I don’t think they are going after ESPN at all. It is the game environment they are building. In other words, they aren’t after the volume a big media company like ESPN generates, but instead smaller numbers of people who are taking sides.
I think that is a good strategy. The ESPN “coversations” are like huge mobs, no way to stand out and lots of troll/you suck kind of comments. Too big for their own good. Targeted/focused ideas like Mojo could offer a lot of value.