As the world’s most popular sport, soccer (or football as it is called in most of the world) has no shortage of devout fans, and with the World Cup coming up in just over a year, that popularity is set to skyrocket once again. So it’s no surprise that social networks dedicated to the sport have emerged that are looking to capitalize on this massive market. One of these is Footbo, a soccer-centric social network that has just closed a $1 million funding round from Pitango Venture Capital.
Since launching last June, the site has built up an international audience of 240,000 across English, Spanish, and German-speaking countries. The site has also recently implemented Facebook Connect, and is working to further increase exposure through a number of widgets.
While Footbo is touted as primarily a social network, it offers a handful of major interlocking components. Its social network includes standard functionality like allowing users to connect with friends, participate in groups, and message each other. There’s also a collection of data and statstics of professional teams from 70 international leagues, including scores, standings, and fixtures (schedules). The site also has over 50,000 team and player profiles.
Users can interact with this data through prediction games (which have also been integrated into Virgin Media), customized news feeds, and subjective grading of how their favorite teams fare during a game, which they can then compare to other users. Users can also add their own content, including blogs and wiki pages revolving around players and teams. Members can also use the Footbo platform to create their own teams and leagues for recreational play.
Footbo competes with a number of other soccer-centric sites, including ESPN’s Soccernet.
Spelled Footbo wrong in the title.
cricket will overtake as most popular sport. we are humans, hands are more important than legs!
cricket you say… Wake up!
Depends on what you’re using the legs for…
^^ First thing I noticed too
I can see how this is a no-brainer.
But they will run the risk of becoming a fad. Social networks that don’t serve or solve a “meaningful” problem are like Television Series.
WTF is the “meaningful problem” that Facebook solves?
I didn’t say anything about facebook, but rather social networks in general.
I had meaningful in quotes because different social networks mean different things to different folks.
Well, but what product on the internet solves a meaningful problem? Browser games, WOW? I know what you mean but almost every commercial site won’t solve any problems. It rather creates new ones…
obviously the “meaningful” problem that fb “solves” is connecting with your peers and more widely, acquaintances. You must be living under a rock not to know why facebook has become so important, because it makes it SEEM LIKE you HAVE TO keep these connections, hence solving the “meaning” problem.
I could elaborate a lot more on this, if needed.
Not necessary.
But I’d argue that hardcore sports fans following their teams/sports will turn out to be a better membership base than a bunch of random people following updates by people they haven’t seen face-to-face in years.
Niche Social Networks will prevail over general sites like Facebook, Bebo, and Hi-5.
I took a recent trip to China, and noticed that basketball is far more popular than soccer now.
Interesting network, will be joining shortly to get the feel of it.
GOOD LOoooord that’s alot of people!
Another social network…about soccer…how exciting. *yawn*
another blog about phones, GAG
What i don’t understand, and I understand very little, is how these companies get millions of dollars to simply recreate the wheel.
There are 10,000s of soccer sites
There are NUMEROUS networking sites with 1000s of groups talking soccer
How is this different?
Why would I signup to another site when I already have a facebook account and chat soccer with
like-minded people?
It would be like me securing $1-2 mil to cover Tech related news
There are over billion websites out there why make another one? A dumb question don’t you think
There is also a bigger and more sophisticated soccer social media platform called OleOle (www.oleole.com) — check it you if you are interested.
Adam,
Checked out OleOle before, have a profile there in fact. It’s a very fragmented network and doesn’t even come close to having the social features that Footbo has. You can’t really compare the platforms like-for-life – Footbo kicks OleOle’s ass.
When it comes to features, OleOle has tons and new ones are being added consistently. I think the only thing that differntiates Footbo is that they have managed to get players and well-known journalists to write posts. Apart from that, OleOle wins.
In order to truly enjoy and appreciate OleOle you need to give the site as much information about yourself as you can (favorite teams, players, location..etc) and it will personalize the home page for you.
Adam, your blog is great no doubt… and the piece you wrote on Footbo was excellent – would love to see you write more on there…
I tried back in the day to play around with the other football networks, but they didn’t do it for me…
Check http://www.oleole.com/ , great network, they also joined with some on major football blogs & bloggers like ArseBlog, big audience.
OleOle has great content but it’s little hard to digest it, messy design IMO.
Also, FootyTube has done a great thing with connecting with the fans although it’s more clips search engine but it has got some great features http://beta.footytube.com/
I love how competing sites try to jump in and comment about how good their site is. The fact is there are a lot of football sites out there, but only one where you can get personalized news feeds according to the teams and players you like (as opposed to going to lots of different news sources)…and that’s Footbo
As in other posts above, I too find footbo hard to navigate and more than a little messy. And community features are severely lacking.
Another site that has come up here, the new footytube beta, I don’t believe has been given the attention it merits.
It was a long while before I even realized footytube 2 was in public beta, they seem to have kept it oddly low-key. I picked it up from Oscar Karlsten’s twitter and review (for anyone interested: http://www.osca...m/footytube-20/)
I have to say, like Oscar, I was pretty shocked after signing up to see what an amazing job they’ve done and how much it has matured from the original wordpress blog (which hurts my eyes). The new version is quite simply a beautiful example of what web 2.0 is all about, and in my opinion the guys behind it are WAY ahead of the curve in terms of innovative features, both community-wise and in terms of content aggregation, they really have set the bar for these types of sites very high indeed, and I expect the site will explode when it comes out of beta. I just hope their servers don’t go with it
Which brings me back to your comment Jim. From what I can tell from the footytube aboutus page the venture was unfunded. Which begs the question, if they can do so so much with so very little, then I wonder what the original $1m footbo raised was spent on?
Was it the celebrity blogs and endorsements that you’re evidently so proud of? If so, I would profer that the money would have been more wisely spent had they focused on the core USP – i.e. developing actual useable community features (rather than wasting money on throwaway articles from celebs). That’s what popbitch is for
Anyhow, good luck to them, let’s hope they get it right with the extra $1m
Yeah, FootyTube will probably beat their ass in near future. They have content people are searching for, great user interaction on the site as well. I could browse all day on the site.
@Jim
I don’t own or work for any of these sites. I just say which ones I like as a fan.
@Matej – it’s ok matey! I can see you are just a fan, wasn’t directed at you in any way in particular. But at the “check this site out” comments that generally appear. Gotta say though, to RelishMan too, I checked out the site and don’t know what the raving is about. Sure, looks neat and tidy, has good videos, but little content and no community. Good luck to them, they add value for football fans no doubt. But I’ll be sticking with Footbo as it provides the richest experience
@Jim
No community? I don’t wanna turn this into a my willy is bigger than your willy slanging match, but you clearly haven’t looked around much, the place oozes community interaction, you only have to look at the comment counts on latest matches to work that out. Footbo is dead by comparison.
Or perhaps you’re idea of a rich community experience is walking through a silent graveyard in the middle of night? If so, then you may have a point.
I think if anyone here works/owns a football site it is you Jim (and we can all guess which one it is from your two clearly biased and outlandish comments).
naaaah. just got waaaaaay too much time on my hands! i dont know about biased and outlandish. never had that about my comments before but i guess there’s always a first time right?! oh, and just for the record i am not one for silent graveyards in the middle of the night! haha
Thanks for starting a catfight in our honour guys, but…
We believe there’s ample room for competition in this sector, and will ultimately just lead to bigger, better sites from us all. Â
We hope to be testing the VC water ourselves pretty soon, so Kudos to footbo on the latest round, and best of luck.
Vlad,
Footytube.com (we’re too busy to have job titles)
Hi Relishman, glad you like the review and Footytube 2. I think they’ve made a fantastic job but I think they need to launch it to the mass and sunset the old version asap for it to actually kick off.
They seem to be trying to be a little of everything (blog, team into, predictions, etc.) instead of focusing on one good product.
There’s a much more professional football prediction platform called BetUknow that you should check out at http://www.betuknow.com.
Many other blog networks, like Sportingo for example, have posts that are much better written.
Well, that’s kind of the point… it brings everything together and isn’t a purely betting site like BetUKnow. Footbo is a site where fans can connect on a number of levels. And regarding the posts, its refreshing to read what real users have to write as opposed to what paid writers have to write… That’s my opinion in any case.
Looks like more football social network are coming:
http://www.extrafootie.co.uk
There is also oleole.com which is the biggest football social network. Zefanclub.com & myfoot.fr (in france)
Barcelona us gonna kick some Manchester United butty on the 27th!! Go Messi!!
Haha, I hope they screw it up cos I’m a Madridista! LOL
Impressive number of users since launch. I wish they’d spend some of that new $$ and go out and re-brand under a better/more relevant domain/business name.
Hi,
First of all, this is not advertising as the website is not live yet (and sorry if you think this post is off topic, in this case just ignore it !), I only would be interested to get your opinion on the project I am currently working on: a football social network (www.footbolea.com) that will be (I believe) a bit different from the existing ones.
Its main feature will basically be a game commentary module that will permit users to commentate football games from their mobile and “followers” to take part into the discussion around the games they are currently following.
You may say that there is nothing new compared to existing media websites live commentaries, but I think there is potential here as -amongst others:
- anybody will be able to commentate a game (vs games commentated only by journalists)
- will permit to follow lower division clubs which do not get coverage
- would permit to follow foreign leagues in your own language which may not be covered in your country,
- etc.
Thanks !