Social Media – Page 5

CBSSports.Com adds two additional Football Programs, Expands Fantasy Football Program

September 6, 2012 by Greg Quick Leave a Comment

CBSSports.com

Not enough football programs and highlight shows to satisfy your needs? Well then you will be happy to know that CBSSports.com has stepped up to the plate with an extra 10 hours of programming a week.

It has launched a pair of video series that will air daily with one, Pro Football 360 covering the NFL while the other, College Football 360, obviously handling college football. The shows will be a mix of analysis of match-ups and past games as well as news.

In addition the programs, both of which will be hosted by Kevin Corke, will feature experts on the NFL and college football and handle questions from fans as well as discuss trending topics of the day.

The lineup for the Pro Football 360 program will include Jason LaConfora, Pat Kirwan, Pete Prisco, Mike Freeman and Clark Judge as the regular lineup. For the College Football 360 programming team CBSSports.com is providing college football experts Dennis Dodd, Bruce Feldman, Tony Barnhart as well as a floating lineup for the program.

The programs will be available live, on demand through the CBSSports.com mobile app and are distributed across the CBS Audience Network. In addition Fantasy Football Today has added Sunday morning and evening shows so that it will now be on four days a week.
2012 Season Weekly Schedule

Monday
• College Football 360 – 10:00 AM, ET
• Pro Football 360 – 3:00 PM, ET

Tuesday
• College Football 360 – 10:00 AM, ET
• Fantasy Football Today – 12:00 PM, ET
• Pro Football 360 – 3:00 PM, ET

Wednesday
• College Football 360 – 10:00 AM, ET
• Fantasy Football Today – 12:00 PM, ET
• Pro Football 360 – 3:00 PM, ET

Thursday
• College Football 360 – 10:00 AM, ET
• Fantasy Football Today – 12:00 PM, ET
• Pro Football 360 – 3:00 PM, ET

Friday
• College Football 360 – 10:00 AM, ET
• Fantasy Football Today – 12:00 PM, ET
• Pro Football 360 – 3:00 PM, ET

Sunday
• Fantasy Football Today – 11:00 AM and 7:00 PM, ET
If you wish to follow on social media there are a variety of options:
College Football 360
Twitter: #CF360
Facebook: Facebook.com/EyeonCollegeFootball

Pro Football 360
Twitter: #PF360
Facebook: Facebook.com/EyeOnFootball

Fantasy Football Today
Twitter: #FFT
Facebook: Facebook.com/CBSSportsFantasyFootball

Filed Under: CBS Sports, Facebook, Live sports via mobile, NCAA.com, NFL, Social Media, Sports Social Media, Twitter Tagged With: CBSSports.Com, Football, NFL

Bleacher Report adds Group Interaction Feature to Team Stream App

September 5, 2012 by Paul Kapustka Leave a Comment

The popular Team Stream app from sports site Bleacher Report is getting more interactive, with the release of a new version that adds the ability for people to share their sports-team preferences with friends. Available initially only for the iPhone version of Team Stream, the “groups” feature will let fans share not only news but opinions with each other, bringing Team Stream into the field of smack-talk/interactive sports apps like PlayUp and others.

Bleacher Report, which was recently acquired by Turner Sports for approximately $180 million, claims to have 1 million users of its Team Stream app, which brings a constant “stream” of sports news, opinions, tweets and other content from the Web and organizes it by team for easy consumption. By adding an interactive feature Bleacher Report is seeking to keep fans embedded in Team Stream longer, instead of having to leave it to share opinions or news with friends who share the same team interests.

Fan interaction is hardly a new feature on the web, as sharing opinions and sports news seems to be one of the bigger things happening on Twitter these days. And standalone apps like PlayUp have already found big crowds of fans who want to set up or join sports-specific, game-specific or team-specific “rooms” or other online gathering places to interact. Team Stream, which has been focused on providing news and other content, is coming at the sharing equation from another direction, but one that seems to make sense as sharing apps like PlayUp have recently started adding news feeds to their feature set.

“We’ve found that most sports fans have small but distinct groups of friends they talk to about their favorite sports or teams, but still lack a simple way of sharing and reacting to news with them,” said David Finocchio, Chief Content and Product Officer at Bleacher Report, in a press release. “This version of Team Stream fills that void by providing a more efficient way for fans to quickly share the latest on their teams with the right group of friends and then react together.”

According to Bleacher Report, the new feature allows users to “easily add their friends to a group and share their favorite stories with them. Friends can open the group, read the shared stories and easily reply to the group all from their phones.” From an outside perspective the feature might also act as a good recruiting tool for B/R, allowing current Team Stream users to introduce the app to friends who might not have heard of it before. According to Bleacher Report the new 2.0 version of the Team Stream app will be developed for the Android and iPad versions of the app sometime in the future, but is only available now for the iPhone.

Filed Under: Apple, Apps, bleacherreport, iPhone, Social Media, Sports Social Media, Turner Sports Tagged With: Bleacher Report, iPhone, Mobile Sports Report, Paul Kapustka, Team Stream, Turner Sports

Pac-12-Networks, Ooyala release Pac-12 Now for iPad

August 29, 2012 by Greg Quick

Pac-12 Now for iPad opens up multi-screen viewing

The Pac-12 via its Pac-12 Networks continues to move to enhance its presence in the digital world and with partner Ooyala has now delivered an iPad app that will enable fans to watch both live and video on demand games (VOD).

The app, Pac-12 Now for iPad, is one of the first efforts from the recently formed Pac-12 Networks, an organization that is designed to bring both broadcast and streaming sports and entertainment to fans, in conjunction with its partner Ooyala. Pac-12 Now for iPad is available in the iTunes Store and on Pac-12.com.

Ooyala developed what it calls a graphic interactive program guide (IPG) that enables users to customize the app to meet their individual preferences. It allows a user to prioritize both sports and teams during setup and has a chat feature so that fans can share comments and thoughts when viewing live action via Facebook and Twitter feeds that are enabled next to the video feed so that you do not have to switch to a different app while viewing.

Going forward the IPG will also feature the ability to alert users to events that are currently live and inform them on issues such as games that are tied, close or near the final moments as well as provide social feedback via a social graph that you can ac

cess.

The two plan on continuing to expand the technology so that users with PCs, tablets and smartphones will be able to watch games when not in front of a television or to use it as a second screen, watching two events at the same time. Android is the next platformed targeted and it should be out soon.

The goal is to broadcast 850 live and VOD sporting events over the year as well analysis and commentary, statistics, press conferences, documentaries and other content. By connecting it directly to social media such as Facebook and Twitter it enables a degree of participation for fans that a simple broadcast would not allow.

Aside from the IPG Ooyala also provided what it calls a Stat Server. The Stat Server automatically imports sports stats and timecode data from third parties and tags that with live and VOD content. This enables users to search by stats or event tags and allows the information to be displayed at the proper time when an event is being viewed, regardless if it is live or VOD. The authentication is designed to make it easy to view content across multiple connected devices.

It is very interesting to look at all of the ways in which colleges are reaching out to fans and getting both sports and academic advancements out to alumni and fans. Recently the ACC added YouTube to its digital network. The Big Ten Network has already expanded out to digital devices and recently added Android support.

This is just great for fans, not just mobile ones but also fans of multiple teams or sports-they can now watch a game on a mobile device while also catching a different one on the TV or a computer, enabling them to easily stay abreast with events in areas that interest them.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Big Ten Network, Comcast, iOS, iPad, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, NCAA Football, NCAA Hoops, Ooyala, Pac-12, Smartphone, Social Media, Tablets Tagged With: ooyala, Pac-12 Networks

Best Moments of the Summer Olympics: Oscar Pistorius to Missy Franklin

August 13, 2012 by James Raia

Sports we otherwise don't care about. Subjective judging. Commercial overload. The 30th Summer Olympics were ripe with issues. But it was still hard not to watch and there were plenty of reasons we're glad we did.

Here are the Top-10 Best Things about the London Olympic Games.

Gabby Douglas soared high above the balance beam

10. Michael Phelps. Mission Accomplished. Now go and enjoy life.

9. Bulgarian gymnast Yordan Yovchev, 39 and silver-haired, competed in his sixth Olympics. For once, “You're the Man” meant something.

8. Bob Costas, commenting during athletes' parade in the Closing Ceremonies: “Forging friendships and in some cases, being vibrant, perhaps more than friendships.”

7. Closing Ceremonies. Would have served well as the Opening Ceremonies.

6. Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, Jack Nicklaus, Lance Armstrong. Hey, fellas, meet Mr. Usain Bolt.

5. The image by Reuters photographer Luke MacGregor who took three days but finally got what he wanted — the shot of the full moon under the Tower Bridge as the sixth Olympic ring. No action, no athletes, no image more poignant.

4. Grenada teenager Kirani James asking fellow 400-meter “Blade Runner” Oscar Pistorius to exchange numbers after their semifinal. Pure class at age 19.

3. Oscar Pistorius. Three words: Inspiration, athleticism, graciousness.

2. The image of Gabby Douglas frozen in time a stratosphere about the balance beam taken by Ken Budd of the Associated Press. Note to Pulitzer Prize judges: Look no further.

1. Missy Franklin. One ever-smiling teenager who never stopped proving there's hope for the Olympic Games as something other than sponsor-driven, network-controlled madness.

James Raia is an editor and publisher in Sacramento, California. Visit his site: www.tourdefrancelife.com

Filed Under: Social Media, Twitter, US Open Tagged With: Gabby Doublas, Missy Franklin, Oscar Poistorius, Summer Olympics

Gabby Douglas Soars in Gymnastics and in Twitter Popularity

August 13, 2012 by James Raia

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) might not readily come to mind as a leading source of sports news from the London Olympics. But with the 30th Summer Games now complete, the newspaper should be rewarded with its own gold medal.

Where else could a Summer Olympics enthusiast read a front page article about former figure skating gold medalist Peggy Fleming and other former Olympians who have had successful careers as artists?

Gabrielle Douglas had huge Olympic and Twitter success during the Summer Olympics in London

And where else could Olympic followers read in such detail the trials, tribulations and impact of Social Media in London?

From the Opening Ceremonies to the Closing Ceremonies, no other social media platform was more discussed and utilized than Twitter.

The WSJ followed the Twitter coverage of the Olympics in detail, including an August 11 article that charted the most popular Twitter feeds among the London Games' most celebrated athletes.

For example, gymnast Gabrielle Douglas was an unheralded athlete prior to the Olympics, and the WSJ called her a “relative nobody” on Twitter. But that didn't last long. When Douglas claim

ed two gold medals in t

he first few days of the Olympics, her social media status soared into another stratosphere — much like she did while competing.

By the final weekend of the Olympics, Douglas had 576,654 followers on Twitter, an increase of 1,522 percent and the biggest jump among the top-20 most popular athletes on Twitter who competed in London.

Here's the top-5 largest Twitter popularity increases during the Summer Olympics, with name, sport, Twitter name, Twitter followers on July 27, followers on Aug. 10 and percentage increase:

1. Gabrielle Douglas, gymnastic, (@grabrielledoug), 37,888, 614,542, +1,522%
2. Missy Franklin, swimming, (@FranklinMissy), 29,694, 346,353, +1,066%
3. Jordyn Wieber, gymnastics, (@jordyn_wieber), 65,404, 446,108, +582%
4. Ryan Lochte, swimming, (@ryanlochte), 161,045, 911,290, +388%
5. Jake Dalton, gymnastics, (@jake_dalton), 16,939, 82,635, +342%

Michael Phelps was the most poplar American competing in the Summer Olympics via Twitter. Phelps had 319,427 followers at the start of the London Games and 1,246,351 after two weeks of competition. His popularity increase of 290 percent was the eighth-largest increase.

Equally interesting, of course, will be to re-visit the athletes' Twitter totals in the near future to determine if they retain their Twitter popularity.

James Raia is a California-based journalist who writes about sports, travel and leisure. Visit his cycling site at tourdefrancelife.com

Filed Under: Social Media, Social Media Data, Twitter Tagged With: Gabrielle Douglas, James Raia, Social Member, Summer Olympics, Twitter

PGA Goes Big With Social Media at Golf’s Final Major

August 8, 2012 by Paul Kapustka 5 Comments

Screen grab of the PGA's Social Caddy page. Credit: PGA

We’ll have a separate Watching Golf this Week post tomorrow with all the details as usual, but I think it’s worth taking a quick look today at how the PGA is going big with social media for the year’s last major, the PGA Championship, which starts tomorrow.

Aside from the usual flurry of tweets and posts from the tour, it appears that the PGA is leaving no social media stone unturned this week. Starting with something they are calling the Social Caddy — a catch-all portal page with a bunch of links to things like Twitter streams and Instagram photos — the tour also has people roaming around grabbing fun, pointless little Viddy videos like this near-worthless “inside” meetup with World No. 1 Luke Donald.

There’s other stuff too, like assigning a writer to capture the predictions of fans from the PGA’s Facebook page. Pretty neat. But I’m not sure where I stand on the whole Social Caddy page idea — one thing I hear from a lot of people is that they are at the social media exhaustion level, and the idea of having to monitor or join one more place to share is not very appealing. But that may just be the media/golf insider thing. It may very well be that there are a lot of golf fans who are new to things like Twitter and need a helping hand to find Twitter handles for players, golf writers and other interesting folks who might have something worthwhile to say. (It looks like a lot of self-promoters and golf advertisers have found the PGA’s “fans” column on the Social Caddy Twitter feed so I am not sure how worthwhile that stream will be going forward)

So far it also looks like most of the “social” content is being generated by PGA.com types, which can be amusing (there is a Viddy clip of someone standing at the back of the driving range, challenging players to hit him) but will probably get stale soon. It would be much better if the PGA’s Instagram page, for example, had Instagram pix from the players themselves — as we’ve learned from Kevin Love and the Olympics some of that real-insider stuff can be pretty good and bring us a lot closer to the athletes than ever before.

Though golfers are notorious for being cell phone addicts — like Rickie Fowler, who tweets from his private plane — I also seem to see that most of them shut down the streams when the tournament starts. And it’s really not so hard to assemble your own golfing social caddy, by just finding and following people who are interesting in your main Twitter feed. And, I am guessing a lot of this effort is going to be lost anyway due to the atttention conflict with the last weekend of the Olympics. But when it comes to social media, clearly the PGA is trying hard.

Filed Under: Facebook, Golf, PGA, Social Media, Sports Social Media, Startup, Turner Sports, Twitter, Viddy Tagged With: Facebook, Mobile Sports Report, Paul Kapustka, PGA Championship, Turner, Twitter, Viddy

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