Social Media

I think social media is definitely becoming more popular in the power soccer world. I know that our team has joined the trend as well. It is incredibly convenient to be able to announce an event to everyone who really cares in one concise message. I know that I'm trying to keep our page updated with quotes or other bits of information so that there is a relatively consistent image of our team that appears on Facebook every few days. However, like I said before, our team is definitely not unique. The United States Power Soccer Association, Team USA, and many other individual clubs like us all have fan pages, so that makes it very easy for each individual player to be able to see what's going on with other teams around the country. There is an immense power in social media, but of course it needs to be harnessed and utilized properly. Even if you have a Facebook page, it will not do a lot of good if nobody knows about it. Therefore, there needs to be a commitment to outreach. Our team is doing well with this, and even though we are not one of the best teams in America, we have more fans than any individual team I've been able to find in the country, and worldwide it looks as if we are only bested by Aspire in England in terms of fans. Let's keep working on it!

Photo by marcopako  on Flickr

True Power

Today, I had a very interesting discussion that got me thinking about the perceived power of social media and whether or not it really deserves all the media attention it gets. According to an article I read about Facebook, on December 1, 2009, Facebook had 350,000,000 users. That is approximately 5% of the world with or without computers taking the estimate that the world has 7,000,000,000 people for ease of calculation. However, there were only, according to the Computer Industry Almanac, about 1.6 billion Internet users in the world in 2008. This means that Facebook attracted approximately 22% of Internet users. If this chunk is not large enough for you, take into account that in July of 2009, China, the world's largest Internet user, banned its 235,000,000 Internet users from accessing Facebook. That means that these 235,000,000 could not be included in the count of Internet users who use Facebook simply because they are forbidden by the government. Therefore, of the Internet users who are able to access Facebook, just about 26% of them do. Think about it; one social media site is able to attract over one quarter of the Internet using public. This is immense power; being able to market to 350,000,000 people possibly simultaneously is amazing. If you posted your product on enough fan pages and group pages, it would definitely be possible to appeal to almost all of these users all for free.

I definitely realize that posting on thousands or possibly millions of group pages would be an incredible waste of time because not every product would appeal to each market segment that each group represents. Nevertheless, I find it amazing that it would be so easy to appeal to so many people for free. I have seen Facebook utilized in so many different ways to publicize various types of events and news stories. For my readers in Vermont, do you remember Pete the Moose? An animal's life is worth 2910 fans. Imagine what could happen to anything that is able to find a few media outlets to publicize their Facebook page like the Moose did.

I realize that I have not written about sports at all today, and I am sorry about that. However, I just wanted to alert all of you to the immense power that social media has, Facebook in particular as it is the largest social media site on the Internet. So, I guess the application to sports is that if you have a team or an event, such as an AAU tournament, that you're trying to publicize, you can use traditional mediums such as the newspaper, but don't forget about the impact social media can have. How many newspapers do you know that have a circulation of 350,000,000 potential customers?

Image Courtesy Of:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jaycameron/ / CC BY 2.0

A Brave New World

When I was a young child in daycare, my friend Isaac and I would play Madden 95 on his Sega Genesis. Talk about high-tech! Looking back on what the videogame was, I wonder why I was so amazed by the graphics. At this point in my life though, I did not have any videogame experience beyond the Sega. Ever since, Madden has been pumping out the game after game that allow children to play just like I did. However, the future of Madden, while it seems to intend to remain in the console market, will be branching out soon. In multiple articles released today, Peter Moore, the president of the EA sports, has said that a version of Madden will be released on everyone's favorite social networking site, Facebook! While I could not locate many details as to how the game would play, I'm wondering if it will be along the lines of Farmville. Farmville is incredibly popular in that it allows people the ability to benefit through the increased participation of friends. In order to do well, it is definitely helpful to have many friends beside you. I wonder if maybe Madden will adapt a similar mode. The more friends you have, the more talent you will be able to add to your team. I definitely do not anticipate Madden being a live play football game simply because that would be an incredible load to put on an Internet connection. Therefore, it might be more along the lines of NFL Head Coach where the user chooses the players and the plays but does not actually execute them. Also, it is possible that this game will be nothing like the rest of the franchise. Because it is on a different platform, it does not necessarily need to live up to the high performance expectation that people have come to expect from the best-selling videogame franchise. Simply using Madden on the name of this application will cause amazing traffic and usage because of the brand recognition. Brands can sell better than the product can often times.

Will I be playing Madden if it ever debuts on Facebook? Without playing it, I cannot say whether or not I will become a loyal follower. I have played Facebook games and enjoyed many of them, so I will give Madden a try as long as it is free. I would also really appreciate it if the game would be competitive even if the user does not feel like buying points through PayPal. I just want to play a fun little game; I don't want to become enthralled with a game that will lead me to drain my savings as I have seen World of Warcraft and other MMO's do to many others.