Yardbarker wants to be sports news 2.0

Are there any web 2.0 fantasy football leagues out there?

Not really fantasy, but there’s pickdee — http://www.pickdee.com/ which
lets you set up games around predicting sporting results for a growing
variety of competitions.

[ disclaimer, I built the site ]

Gary

cheers to them for trying, i guess, but i think the site, at first glance, is, ummmm…I promised myself I’d start being more civil - taking into account peoples’ feelings…and that’s not so bad, after all, is it?….well, I don’t digg the site - as far as something i think i’d go to. but, i’m open. i might bookmark it as a ‘revisit’.

it’s too generic. i haven’t checked out many sports blogs and content-type sites, but the ones i do check out and like are the ones that are *very* niche. one team, possibly as big as one sport in one leaguge for ‘national’-type coverage, but these ‘all you can eat’ sites are totally blah. there are other ‘professional’ blogs coming online, too, which are decent, occasionally, like Deadspin. As I continue to get all amped-up for the steroids-induced NFL season headed our way, I really am just not interested in reading about Pete Sampras, and Tiger Woods, and birdies and loves and court etiquette and the rest of that nonsense. I don’t even want my English Premiere League mixed in with my NFL. Even when the next old white American dude buys the next old English dude’s soccer team. Not interested. Maybe they start syndicating to the ESPN’s of the world? and other niche sites?

who knows, sports is the 10th largest industry in America - and the mafia-like ownership of major sports are a bunch of old, non-innovative, entitled white guys who continually rip jack from the hands of all-too-eager-to-be-mistreated sports fans. maybe when this recession comes around some people start looking to be treated with a little respect and go to places that at least give the appearance of caring what they think - places with user-generated content. bottom line - there’s plenty of room for innovation in sports in America. If war is a racket, then professional sports ownership in America is the Gambino crime family - those dudes are minting money - and there’s plenty of love to go around.

the interface, though, clean, slick - it’s slammin, no doubt.

http://www.leagueoffans.org/

Great! Now I can ignore it along with Digg Sports!

Seriously, the allure of social software (digg, del.icio.us, et al) is discovering things you never knew of prior. Sports news does not fit this model. Every sports post you see is some generic headline like “Tiger wins the Masters”. This is stuff you can already find on espn.com or any other news site.

Now, if http://www.badjocks.com could be ‘web-2.0-ified’, that would be sweet!

Pickdee is pretty cool. Never saw it before. Good Job.

I am a fan of Yardbarker. I have used it to get all my content for my fantasy draft. It’s not that I can’t google “fantasy sports draft” and see what comes up…it’s that I like a group of bloggers who care about sports and are giving me the content that they find that I might miss. If it is too much like Digg, it doesn’t bother me. I am all for it because I use Digg to get good tech news that is not manufactured by some editor somewhere. Sports needs the same thing. This is a great attempt at harnessing all the sport stuff I want to read together on one site. I am a user and a fan.

What I don’t like…I think the front page is too cluttered with recent posts. I don’t know if I should read through the posts by other “yardbarkers” or just go search the site for what I am looking for. I am not sure I want to read that first post right away because often times I don’t know what the blogger is talking about. And, what if the post just sucks?

Anway, I am a fan of the Yard…

Anyone with even a casual interest in sports will likely be unimpressed with yardbarker. An avid sports fan will find it useless. The majority of the content I saw in my brief perusal was old news. Jeff George signing with Raiders? We all knew that yesterday. There is nothing here that one cannot get from CBS.Sportsline.com and/or ESPN.com, along with your local sports talk stations and Sportscenter. Which again, any avid sports fan is already surfing. So, what does yardbarker offer that is all the unique? There’s ain’t that much unique sports news out there to make it as compellling as Digg itself. I don’t see a “next level” here at all

ABCotaa, I just think the functionality is interesting. Glad you pointed out that the content is slow right now, though the way these things work a larger user base will speed up story submission and - in theory at least - the best coverage will rise to the top. Perhaps it won’t work this way for sports though. Thanks for your thoughts.

Yardbarker is interesting from a news perspective although as ANCotaa pointed out, there are a limited number of stories that appeal to a wide audience so it will be interesting if they can build the community to pull out interesting content.

A group of other sites is betting that the unmet need for sports fans is “beating your frends.”

Protrade — A stock market exchange for athletes
FanIQ.com — YahooAnswers for sports predictions
Pickspal and NBX — Fantasy Sportsbook

I’m sure there are others… An estimated 15 million people are playing fantasy sports and spending >$1.5B on fantasy sports this year so they may be onto something….

i’m still pretty new to the SF scene - i’m curious what it’s like to have your competitors on the next block. Markos Moulitsas’ Sportsblog empire or whatever it is - i know he lives in Bezerkely - don’t know if he operates out of there, but i suspect so. and YardBarker is in Bezerkeley. guess they’re not really direct competitors, but, what happens when they both show up to the same Starbucks in the morning? do they duke it out - Ultimate Fighting, but geek-style - Lattes in hand?

Developing…

Thanks for the list Bill. I’ve checked out Protrade and NBX, but hadn’t heard of the other two. As for Yardbarker, I’m not too impressed - a little too Web 2.0-ey for me.

Another one to check out:

BleacherReport.com - similar concept, but more emphasis on user generated editorials (basically blogs, but presented as you’d see a column on ESPN.com - with fancy illustrations), rather than being a basic news aggregator

Pete here, from Yardbarker. Thanks Marshall for covering our beta release — we really value the feedback that is already starting to come out of of this post. It’s encouraging that most of the functional shortcomings that you mention (no RSS, duplicate stories, incomplete search) are things that will be fixed really soon. As for the bigger issues — competition, etc…. well, we hope we’re addressing those too

Biff and ABCotaa, I thought I’d respond to your comments about the need for an aggregator for sports content, since sports news is basically a commodity. We don’t totally disagree with that, but our focus isn’t just on aggregating news. We get excited by all the great analysis, opinion, and humor that has been springing up on blogs, message boards, and even small newspapers’ sites. A lot of this stuff is pretty hard to find, and the value we’re trying to add is in pulling it all into a single destination, categorizing it, and maintaining a system whereby the best stuff surfaces to the top because *sports fans* say it’s the best. News is important, but we’ve learned that the action is in the analysis and debate.

Thanks again!

And to answer your question, Peter… NEVER Starbucks.

There are tons of “digg clone” niche sites out there - including sporting news, which you can easily set one up with an open source apps like Pligg.

What’s the big deal about this one??

I’ve seen Yardbarker and Sport’s Blog Nation, I don’t think that’s adding more to the sports conversation. Its seems like the real winner out of all of these links is ArmchairGM. It needs a little face-lift graphically, but it seems like there are a bunch of articles (not just recycled news links) from random sports fans and seems to have a very human touch to it.

I’m a hardcore Wikipedian, so I also like that its built on MediaWiki b/c its going to give users complete freedom to express their fandom. (Plus, I know how to use it). Userboxes, customized userpages.

I also feel like many smaller sports aren’t adequately represented on most popular sports sites and this site might be able to plug that market. ESPN might not list all the records for Swimming or Curling, but the Wiki aspect makes it completely scalable.

I dunno, just my two cents . . . this should be an interesting marketplace to pay attention to.

Pete if you can mine through the noise and get content that is not as easily surfaced from the plethora of sports content sites already out there, then I think you would have a winner. But like I said, what I saw today was basically like watching re-runs of Sportscenter.

i think the site shows promise for all the pontificators who must have their opinion validated! blogs are cool, if you just want to be the tree falling in the woods that no on hears. but if you crave developing a fan base and gaining validity for your opinions, Yardbarker has the potential to make the average enthusiast a web star with a following. Neat concept!

I think the problem with gaining validity for your opinions on Yardbarker is that all of the links to ESPN will obscure an individual enthusiast’s voice. That’s a big problem.

I think it’s funny that a web site about web 2.0 is calling sports fans a “niche audience”. How many TV channels, magazines, and live events does web 2.0 claim?

You wrote, “Sports Blog Nation seems to be getting some traction with users but is much simpler in format.”

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.

As a standalone service I don’t think this is very useful. The problem with sports and a service like this is that it doesn’t become news on Yardbarker until somebody “yardbarks” it. If there’s breaking news (i.e. the Yankees win the World Series) and nobody yardbarks it for 2 hours, you’re way too late. Sports news moves so quickly that real-time aggregation is required. This is of course less of an issue if you have a userbase the size of Digg, but even with Digg, technology news isn’t nearly as time-sensitive as sports news.

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.

One thing I noticed: Yardbarker users are credited with authoring the articles they submit.

See:

http://beta.yardbarker.com/author/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.

“A lot of this stuff is pretty hard to find, and the value we’re trying to add is in pulling it all into a single destination, categorizing it, and maintaining a system whereby the best stuff surfaces to the top because *sports fans* say it’s the best.”

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.

Check this new web 2.0ish sports fan beta site , you can register and become a reporter. Sportbuzz
http://www.sportbuzz.com

I am a fan of the ‘Backyard’ channel. For a sports addict, it gives me a rest from the day-to-day facts, and loops me in on the all good, salacious news items, of which many are not reported by the main stream press. Kind of like ‘US Weekly’ for sports geeks. Is this a ‘niche market’, or an untapped one?

Skeptic brings up a great point. The real question is whether sports fans will put the time and effort into becoming editors and being rated. The technology community is so tight-nit, savvy and the information so fragmented that Digg was a great solution for that particular category.

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…

nebsys: what’s web 2.0ish about your site?

“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.sportbuzz.com/statistics/0,17

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

“One thing I noticed: Yardbarker users are credited with authoring the articles they submit.”

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

I think there is an arena for individual bloggers to post their opinions. The problem is that no one is going find some random individual opinions in the sea of blogs. Yardbark and similar sites allows individuals to get their blogs out there. At that point, its up to the blogger to write good content that will readers coming back.

Even the niches don’t need to be that specific. Check out a site like http://www.southeastcollegesports. 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.

If you are looking for wiki software in action for sports, I would encourage you to take a look at the Baseball-reference.com Bullpen.

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.Baseball-Reference.com/

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

D’oh

“I run BR, and it is”

time for more coffee….

This may be slightly off topic, but folks just looking for a simple rss feed of sports scores might want to check out http://www.totallyscored.com/. It’s not commercial or anything - just a simple and useful web service with a very specific and simple goal.

crimeny!!! i just looked at the numbers for Sports Blog Nation or whatever you call it. unbelievable. i mean, UN-BEE…you get the point.

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.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvio_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 agree with Ron. A Digg rip off for sports… big deal. Aggregating sports stories like fannnation.com or this one is all a big boring rip off of the old MyYahoo stuff. I follow three teams. And I go to their unofficial sites or ESPN.com to find out what’s going on. Some mega aggregator feeding me 25 stories about the quarterback who tweaked an ankle is stupid.