shit-happens 3573243 The best of chrysler minneapolis….

that’s it. the game is up. markos has done it. he’s found the winning formula. he’s slowly building his web empire while others are sleeping. good – keep sleeping – i want in on this.

re-usable, skinnable asp-style community websites for rabid fans – highly customizable sites – yet providing strong functionality and interactivity. i’m not Mr. Moulitsas’s biggest fan, but damn has he done it with this sports blog stuff.

Markos Murdoch 4 Preznit! He’s gonna be the next Berlusconi!

Actually, at first I was kidding. Now, I’m not so sure. Berlusconi started his reign of terror with running AC Milan. What’s funny is, Moulitsas can have a new AC Milan site in a week – if he doesn’t already. Moulitsas is probably already getting into video, he’ll be showing up – or one of his entities – on CurrentTV soon, and then he’ll buy currentTV, which will become the new Fox of the center-left, and then he’ll be elected Governor of California, and then he’ll be elected Preznit, and then…then…well I don’t know, but be afraid, be very afraid.

http://en.wikip...lvio_Berlusconi

As far as sports community sites go, think about how psychotic some NFL fans are. Now, multiply by 10 and you get English Premiere League fans. Wonder why old U.S. white guys keep buying those clubs over there? No need to wonder – English Premiereship fans have proven themselves to be much more passive and submissive than even the most rabid NFL fans – they take whatever crap the ownership of their teams decides to do and eat that yummy poop stew like there’s no tomorrow! Yay for passivity!

That said, it’ll be interesting to see if Markos can use his leverage with each particular site to give the fans a voice – instead of just collecting their eyeballs and money.

Developing…

“I run BR, and it is”

time for more coffee….

http://www.bb-ref.com/bullpen/

It was originally populated with about 20,000 pages and we are now up over 36,000 pages and are averaging over 250 updates a day.

It is a subsite of http://www.Base...-Reference.com/

Which as you’ve probably guessed, I run, and is working out well as a full-time gig.

Even the niches don’t need to be that specific. Check out a site like http://www.sout...stcollegesports. Its for writers who want to write about SEC and ACC teams. That way, there is enough content from plenty of teams that a reader can look through.

Skeptic, that’s a really good point and we’re changing it right away. Thanks for the feedback!

“Sportbuzz is the only site for fan journalists. This is a chance for you the fan to see your name in print. Sportbuzz is a global forum for readers, fans and athletes alike to submit articles, views and opinions about their favorite sports and see them posted as professionally edited articles. On top of that we will have forums, personal pages for each author, team and player statistics, breaking news, schedules and more.”

Only site for fan journalists? Apparently you’re unfamiliar with all the sports blogs on blogger and the sports blog networks like sbnation.com.

“Will I be getting paid for submitting articles?

SportBuzz is all about building a community of sport fans for sport fans, we’re not paying our authors. We believe that on-line communities are formed by people that enjoy the process, and do not necessarily seek economic profit. There will be incentives though–in the form of prizes such as tickets for sporting events. As far as financial benefits, having your name in print on a professionally edited article can do wonders for a CV. Sportbuzz is most definitely an opportunity for the enterprising fan to launch a career as a sportswriter, but that is not our primary raison d’etre. We are here for people who write out of love for the game.”

What about copyrights: who owns the material I submit?

All articles submitted to SportBuzz must be your own original work. Once an article is submitted to SportBuzz you agree to transfer the copyright for that article to SportBuzz. The SportBuzz editorial team has the right to make any changes it sees fit before publishing it on the site. But your name stays.”

Ok. So you want me to write stories without compensation to help you build your business and then you want me to transfer the copyright to my work over to you for nothing? Are you crazy? A talented writer is better off setting up their own blog or joining a blog network that will pay them for their work. You’d have to be pretty naive to go for something like this.

Giving you the benefit of the doubt: who are your editors? Do you have professional journalists or editors with name recognition working with you? If you do, maybe there’s a value proposition. If your editors are just random volunteers, who cares? In print? Who do you have distribution deals with? Or by in print do you mean displayed on the sportbuzz website, in which case there’s no difference than publishing it on your own blog. In fact, potential employers will want to see your true writing skills, not something that an average writer wrote that was plussed up by an editing team.

http://www.spor...statistics/0,17

Doesn’t instill a lot of confidence in your editing resources when you can’t even spell “coming” properly.

Isn’t fantasy sports the real opportunity for community here? There are already 15MM+ people doing it? That’s why I find sites like Protrade http://www.protrade.com or FanIQ http://www.FanIQ.com and others interesting…

Then you’re not going to be successful. The ‘best stuff’ as you put it will always be espn/yahoo etc when you put it in the hands of the general public. You’re basically saying that what ’sports fans’ are going to vote as ‘best’ is out of the way/diamonds in the rough stuff. You’re going to be proven wrong.

See:

http://beta.yar...hor/article/834

Roger_Dorn is credited with writing the article even though it was written by Ken Rosenthal of FOXSports.com This is pretty misleading and is ethically and legally borderline. Digg makes it clear that articles are “submitted” by users. It doesn’t claim that they wrote them.

Also, the majority of sports news is commoditized. AP, Reuters, ESPN, CBS Sportsline. All the major sports sites have similar content and do a good job. And there’s not much differentiation between the content so there’s little to “vote” on. The game summary on ESPN.com is going to be nearly identical to the game summary on Sportsline.com.

Additionally, I question whether there’s a significant market for discovery here. With sports, you don’t need to actively seek out sports news. There are enough sites that already do this for you (portals, fan sites, etc.). For instance, I’m a Boston Red Sox fan. I have several sites bookmarked that I check daily to find the latest Red Sox news and commentary. If there’s a Red Sox story of interest, I can be reasonably sure it’s being covered at these fews sites. No need to browse Yardbarker, where I have to trust that Yardbarker users are out there finding good articles about my sports teams.

Digg works great because it focuses on a market that is much more fragmented and where there are multiple independent sources of information. Thus the service is conducive to its market. Yardbarker isn’t conducive to its market and is therefore just an attempt to apply the same model to a different market without some real thought and understanding of the market.

I’d argue it’s not so simple to build a community for every single professional sports team out there, have consistent commentary for every single game, daily features and interviews with notable players, managers, coaches and reporters.

If you’re not familiar with Athletics Nation, you should check it out. It’s the granddaddy of them all. It’s my feeling that Yardbarker-like functionality could be folded into Sports Blog Nation or ESPN.com fairly easily, given enough engineers, pizza and caffeine.