Takkle is a social network for athletes and fans of high school sports. Athletes can create a profile, upload videos and pictures, participate on forums, see key stats, participate in contests and show their passion for their favorite sports. It's backed by Sports Illustrated and features some innovative opportunities for sponsors to connect with this audience.
Basics
Takkle features a nice profile that can be filled with a variety of information, such as hometown, school, graduation year, height, weight, favorite music, books, sports memory, etc.
Photos and videos can be tagged, rated, commented on, and easily embedded and shared on blogs, Facebook and MySpace. Photos and videos can also be sorted by most popular, most recent and highest rated. Based on my research, the most popular pictures are of cheerleaders. Takkle lets the community self-police itself, so members can flag photos if they are inappropriate, and I didn't see any that would fall into this category.
People can create and/or join groups on Takkle, to connect with others who share their interests. Some of the most popular groups are Takkle Recruits, Footballers and Stretching. There are also forums on Takkle, where people can discuss all things relating to high school sports.
Key Differentiators
There are a few things that differentiate Takkle from some other sports social networks out there. They have a very tight focus, so that gives them an advantage over other sites that may just be focused on many different ages/levels of sports.
1) Takkle taps into the basic human desire to be noticed, a characteristic that is especially strong among athletes and high schoolers. They have a section for featured athletes, where the most popular people (for each sport) can be seen each week. There is a section for rankings (top 25s and top 100 players for various sports (voted on by the community). Sports Illustrated also gets into the mix, giving athletes the chance to try to get featured in SI's "Faces in the Crowd," by uploading highlight videos and getting your friends to vote on your profile.
2) Takkle offers incentives to encourage engagement. People can get trophies for reaching various milestones (adding 500 friends, uploading 250 pictures, etc). The trophies are featured on people's profiles, and this is another way people on the site can show off and get noticed.
3) The site taps into competitive nature of sports fans with a feature called "Throwdowns." These are user-created challenges, such as who "Who will win the Eastern Conference Finals?" Or "Basketball: Best Dunk." If you're creating your own Throwdown, you pick an opponent (from your friends or an established champion) and upload a video or picture that people can vote on. The person with the most votes wins, and Takkle keeps track of your Throwdown win-loss record. Throwdowns can easily be shared on Facebook or MySpace, increasing the exposure they get to exisiting and potential Takkle members.
Sponsor Integration
Takkle does a pretty good job at integrating its advertisers and sponsors into the site's features. An example of this is the Takkle 25, a list of the top 25 best high school basketball players (voted by the community) that is presented by New Balance.
Sponsors are also involved in Takkle Battles, which are sponsored competitions where athletes videotape themselves showing off their skills. The winner of these Battles is determined by the community. Past battles include the Wendy's High School Heisman, Three Point Battle sponsored by Spalding and Bench Press Battle sponsored by Met-Rx.
Final Thoughts
Takkle is a very user-friendly and sponsor-friendly niche social network. I think it will continue to be successful in this space. My only question is what happens when people graduate high school. Does Takkle lose these members or have they found that they still keep coming back to the site?
If you want to check out Takkle for yourself you can join here.