May 15, 2007

Angling Masters: Social Networking Comes to Fishing

Duncan Riley

28 comments »

Just when you’d thought you’d seen everything, along comes Angling Masters, a social networking site for recreational fisherman that also supports the creation of user generated online fishing tournaments.

Angling Masters has the standard features you would expect from a MySpace style social networking platform. Users are given their own page (called a cabin) and can add photos, buddies (friends), maintain a blog and list personal details such as location, memberships etc. The layout is slick. It has a nice, be it somewhat masculine feel to it, but unlike the many MySpace clones out there some one actually thought this one through.

The addition of user generated online fishing tournaments is claimed to be a first and I couldn’t find any other site competing in the space.

The “Buddy Tournament feature” allows users to create and participate in online competitions with their fishing “buddies” located anywhere in North America. The vast differences in rivers, lakes and the many fish species inhabiting them is overcome with an interesting twist. Length conversion tables and a series of algorithms allow fish of one species to be compared to fish of another, no matter where they were caught so all participants compete on a level playing field. 12 species of fish are covered and the back end considers how large each species typically grows in each geographic region and scores fish caught accordingly.

Cheating is overcome with tournaments having options such as requiring a witness for the catch and/or the requirement of participating anglers to use the official Angling Masters Measuring Tape to provide accurate measurements of the fish.

If fishing is your thing there are some great features on this site. The idea of competing in fishing competitions online seems so simple I’m surprised it hasn’t been done before.

Sphere It

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 15th, 2007 at 11:54 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Jay

May 16th, 2007 at 12:06 am

Whats next? I envision a social networking site for golfers (if its not already out there). That could actually turn out to be more interesting than the sport itself…
Ella

May 16th, 2007 at 12:27 am

great idea, I think you can transfer it in many areas - in web1.0 we called it forum - now we have social networks. And there still many forums out there which are not transformed into a social networking style.
Duncan Riley

May 16th, 2007 at 12:33 am

Jay
an online golfing tournament! but it would be even harder to stop the cheating
Ben Mc

May 16th, 2007 at 12:44 am

Ah yes, but did you catch the marketing ploy??

To catch a fish, you need bait right?

To catch a fisherman and reel him into your “fishing network”, you need a “masterbaiter”

http://www.anglingmasters.com/.....p;too=2003

Yup, “masterbaiter” is a 24 year old beauty with 3 photo galleries you need to create an account to view

Sounds like enough reason to get a few lonely fisherman to sign up.
I have to hand it to them here, pretty clever actually.
Christian

May 16th, 2007 at 12:53 am

It is a good idea.

Is there already a social net for truck-drivers?
I think you can make a social net for almost any group!
Darren Stuart

May 16th, 2007 at 1:01 am

this is a fantastic idea, I am sure there will be loads of niches getting these type of sites.

Nick, I actually created a prototype for a site where you could create your own tournaments and leagues for gamers(supagamers was the name for it), I realised pretty quickly that the cheating aspect was the deathnail in it. I did come up with a solution but I am not sharing it here :p
Rian

May 16th, 2007 at 1:16 am

Funny, I’m actually quite fond of fishing and have been trying to think up a good way to do this.. not to monetize it, but more to just make a centralized area for fisher(wo)men to get together and share stuff.

I kind of let the idea slide because there are already /so/ many of those type of websites over here in the netherlands, each covering their own little area and group of people.. meh, who knows, maybe this is the solution!

That masterbait chick is absolutely bait.. and it’s working too
Pete

May 16th, 2007 at 2:30 am

Niche Social Networks seem to be “in” right now. But for fishermen? And I thought this Social Network for Sailors was a strange idea: http://www.allsailors.com
Dr.Anil

May 16th, 2007 at 4:02 am

Here is a social networking site for Doctors : http://www.doctorshangout.com
Brandon

May 16th, 2007 at 5:51 am

Actually social networking for fishing has been around for a long time. I actually started it back in 1995 with a site called Chesapeake Angler, it became Worldwide Angler and how as evolved into TidalFish.com. The site has 40,090 anglers registered. They get their own profile, where they fish, what type of boat, what fish they like to fish for etc.

It actually truly works, we have had people meet and get married through it, people get together daily and fish together, we have tournaments, get together, the crabbing guys have two Tidal Fish Crab Feasts a year where about 200+ people show up.

It is amazing. You can check it out at http://www.TidalFish.com

Having been around the internet a long time, I will say niche sites work, it is just getting the community there and keeping the spam out with strict rules.

Thanks

Brandon
Chief Angler
TidalFish.com
http://www.TidalFish.com
The Fisher

May 16th, 2007 at 6:26 am

TroutFanatics.com is doing something similar, just without the “Marinas” and “Lodges” affect for businesses. Each fisherman has their own blog, pictures are geared up with Flickr, and the site also has buddy lists and a classified ads section for fishing folks to sell their used gear.

http://www.troutfanatics.com
pallet jack

May 16th, 2007 at 7:28 am

YASN - but this one looks alright - RB
dave

May 16th, 2007 at 7:49 am

wow, more coverage of another basic install of an open source cms with a tweaked theme…you oughta just put up a site for opensource cms sites and pligg.com digg clones…or perhaps you could cover real companies, that would be cool. nice site, but so are the millions of others ones that you’re ignoring, so i can only imagine that you’re friends with these folks…
angel

May 16th, 2007 at 8:05 am

do you know if this site used any community frameworks to build it?
Drama 2.0

May 16th, 2007 at 8:34 am

Ella: you’re absolutely correct in that social networks are the new forum/message board. I wouldn’t call launching a niche social network a bad idea, but it’s not genius either. If we all agree that it’s not noteworthy when somebody launches a new message board for fans of ABBA, for instance, why should we find it interesting when somebody launches a social network for ABBA? That’s not to say that some of these niche products don’t have the opportunity to be successful in some fashion, but writing about “A new social network for _________ launched today…” is pointless. From what I can tell, Angling Masters has a little more than 2,000 members. No matter how small the niche, I think that most niche social networking services are going to require tens of thousands of regular users to be of real business value and that it’s not worth writing about these things, which are becoming as ubiquitous as message boards, unless they have some real traction.
Ted Rheingold

May 16th, 2007 at 9:02 am

My how times have changed. 6 months ago this entry would have been drummed off this site as some pathetic small-scale copy-cat (or copy-trout I should say) that could never amount to anything except wasting VCs money and simply represents all that is wrong in Investing2.0

Today more then half the responses are positive, and very few are critical of the actual service or model.

I for one, think if it’s executed properly could be wildly successful for the owners and wildly popular for the people that use it. In fact I believe there is almost no end to the number of popular passion-centric communities that can exist. It’s unlikely one will have an exit like YouTube, but if done right could be very rewarding for those involved.
Craig

May 16th, 2007 at 10:09 am

I agree Ted. There’s always going to be a community for someone out there. They don’t all have to be the massive ‘myspace’ experience to be passioniate, loyal and active.

I think this one in particular has an interesting twist, though will struggle with two things: 1) Many (and thisi s a generalization) of the hardcore fishign folk, aren’t necesarily into the social netwrorking thing - just too much of an indoor sport. 2) Lack of gender diversitywill stifle interaction. Let’s face it, it alwasy comes back to hooking up
bdb

May 16th, 2007 at 10:29 am

Well, I have never even considered joining a social network before, but being an avid fisherman this looks interesting. I am not interested in “hooking up” in the classic sense (only with a 21″ small mouth or 25″ rainbo). I ran a word_of_mouth fly fishing business that catered to business execs and firends/family, and we could have used the connectivity that this will provide. We had too few customers, and no way to increase visibility because we didn’t have commercial licenses and couldn’t blatantly advertise. Lots of room for the niche business, and I certainly considered this one. There are still many other niches that could use a social network, but what a lame biz to be in really.
patricia

May 16th, 2007 at 10:38 am

I just don’t blink about social networks anymore. None of the new ones launched feel dynamic to me - they’re niche, so that wins a point, but the formats are the same as what worked two years ago (Myspace) and I think end users are rapidly evolving to adopt other communication and interactive formats online, like 1.0 message boards, posting to blogs, twitter, etc. Plus I already know from fact that a lot of stand alone social networks have a hard time keeping people sticky - I get called in to help people sort out what to do when they’ve launched and find that end users aren’t hanging around.

I just think new sites need to keep pace with what’s working next, not what worked for the two or three dozen sites launched years ago, and both the web and end users have evolved.

Niche sites are fine, but I think they need to be better built around the users in the niche, versus recreating over and over and over what worked somewhere else.
Chris Bennett

May 16th, 2007 at 11:43 am

Patricia,

It is actually really sticky in that most users are active on the site daily and at worse weekly. I agree with you that copying the 2 year old social model is generally a little old school, but I think it works here because the Fishing industry is so old school that this is still on the fore front.

Just do a search in Google for Fishing sites or fishing community or even look at the link to the other site above in the comments that is supposed to be similar. The industry is in the dark ages and that is why I think Angling Masters is brilliant
patricia

May 17th, 2007 at 1:13 pm

@ chris, I didn’t mean you guys specifically. Just in general.
Chris Bennett

May 17th, 2007 at 3:26 pm

Which I totally agree with you
Richard

May 18th, 2007 at 7:41 pm

Have you seen http://www.bountyfishing.com
Richard

May 18th, 2007 at 7:44 pm

Over $125,000 Compete from anywhere in North America
Richard

May 18th, 2007 at 7:45 pm

Verification of your catch
BountyFishing has exclusive rights for the use of world’s most advanced digital imaging forensics software. This software is based on counterfeit digital image detection used by the world’s top law enforcement agencies. BountyFishing’s patent pending measurement technology is used to verify the accuracy of competitive photos and declare authentic winners in the tournaments.

Here is how it works
After your images are uploaded to our database, they are imported into the BountyFishing Forensics software.
The software first detects the image’s authenticity to ensure it is the original photo.
Using the human eye and other reference points in the photo of you holding your catch, the software verifies the accuracy of your ruler.
Finally the length of your fish is measured and validated from the image of the fish and ruler.
Richard

May 18th, 2007 at 7:46 pm

Click the link http://www.bountyfishing.com/howto/compete & learn How to Compete.
Richard

May 18th, 2007 at 7:56 pm

No need to buy a ruler…
Richard

May 18th, 2007 at 7:59 pm

http://www.bountyfishing.com Reel Fishing, Reel Money.