2009 has been a breakout year for sports and social media. Athletes, teams, leagues, coaches, media and sponsors have finally started to take note of how social media impacts sports and fans. There have been some really great executions and ideas as well as some missteps.
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Track Sports Conversations in Twitter with Twackle
Posted on February 23rd, 2009
As reported in today’s Sports Business Journal, Octagon Digital has launched Twackle, a free service that aggregates sports conversations on Twitter in a user-friendly dashboard. Twackle makes it easy to see what sports fans are talking about on Twitter by pulling in sports content from both official news/team sources and general Twitter conversations. So, if you’re a hockey fan you can see all tweets (posts on Twitter) about the NHL in general, news from your favorite team, or specific players, such as Alex Ovechkin.You can also view sports-related tweets from official news sources, such as ESPN, the Chicago Tribune, and BBC.
Twackle joins the ranks of StatTweets and SportyTweets as aggregators of sports content on Twitter, though Twackle goes a step further by integrating content and conversations from all fans, instead of just accounts that were created to post team updates and stats. So far, Twackle has sections for all the major leagues, and other sports such as MMA, horse racing and action sports. If you have a Twitter account, you can sign in to Twackle using your existing information and contribute to the conversation by posting under each individual league/team/player section there. If you’re not on Twitter yet, don’t worry; you can still see what is being said about their favorite sport or team (and certain players). They also have a Facebook App if you’d like to use this while you’re on Facebook.
The site is currently monetized via Google ads, but according to SBJ, Octagon plans to monetize the service by selling ad-based tweets that are occasionally inserted into the data streams. I think this could work, as long as the ads aren’t too intrusive and are for promotions that sports fans would care about. But I’m still not completely convinced, as I know that most Twitter users hate feeling like they’re being marketed to. What do you think?
Overall, I really like this initiative from Octagon. You could just create your own feeds and searches using Twitter’s search tool or another service to monitor keywords you’re interested in, but Twackle makes it easy to see various sports content from Twitter all in one place. I messaged their VP, Jim DeLorenzo, today on Twitter and he called me to discuss Twackle less than 5 minutes later (great example of how companies can use Twitter for awesome customer service and engagement). He was very helpful at explaining everything and mentioned that they will soon release a feature so fans will be able to see the top 10 most popular URLs currently being passed around Twitter for each sport. One thing I would suggest would be to create a video tutorial for the home page to walk people through Twackle’s features and show people exactly how to use it.
So what does this all mean? People in sports are realizing how powerful Twitter can be in communicating with fans/customers and seeing what fans are interested in. More and more athletes, teams and organizations are using Twitter to share news, connect with fans and strengthen their brands. Fans often share and discuss breaking news on Twitter, before it hits mainstream media (I found out about A-Rod and steroids on Twitter, and other sports/non-sports stories, such as the attacks in Mumbai, “broke” on Twitter).
Twitter has grown about 900% since last year and recently received an additional $35 million in funding. It isn’t going away anytime soon. Teams and athletes should at least establish a listening presence here and an official account to protect their brands and make sure people are receiving accurate information. Then, depending on the organization’s goals, comfort level and available resources, it can start publishing updates, participating in conversations and doing some other meaningful things to engage fans.
P.S. – If you don’t know what Twitter is, watch this video.
Tags: octagon, twackle, twitter
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8 Responses to “Track Sports Conversations in Twitter with Twackle”
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- Twackle: New Twitter tool to promote women’s sports? | ...Because I Played Sports
- NCAA Selection Show Updates on Twitter by Jason Peck
February 23rd, 2009 at 6:02 pm
This looks like a great service and I could see it being extended easily to other verticals/industries. I agree that the monetization plan sounds kind of sketchy.
February 23rd, 2009 at 7:08 pm
I like it. Have they integrated a pro athlete/celeb channel yet? Seems that they would be in a perfect position to confirm authenticity and streamline pro athlete tweets, right?
February 23rd, 2009 at 7:59 pm
This is funny. I just started using Twitter in earnest last week. It didn’t take very long to realize how nice it would be to have something in Twitter to organize the topics being tweeted. I’ve got people giving political commentary, business commentary, and sports updates, that I am following. I want them organized by topic, not by tweeter. Octagon seems to have seen the opportunity and just seized it, outside of Twitter. The big question I have is, why wouldn’t Twitter do this? I can’t imagine Benchmark invested in Twitter without the expectation that people could organize their tweets on Twitter by topic, and possibly charge for a tool to organize. I know I would pay for that. But I would want to do it for all topics, not just sports.
The Twackle technology is great. Like you, Jason, I question if it can develop a compelling business model. The notion that businesses can continue sustaining themselves on advertising is as factual as the notion that houses will always go up in value. Eventually, a product or service has to be sold to an end customer.
Perhaps there is a reason Mark Cuban won’t fund companies with ad-based business models?
http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2009/02/10/a-maverick-economic-stimulus-plan/
February 23rd, 2009 at 10:32 pm
I don’t really get the value of this. All Twackle does is provide a different way to view search.twitter.com. All they do are simple searches for specific terms (e.g. NCAA) or include the tweets from particular accounts. No real magic sauce and nothing you can’t get with search.twitter.com.
Pretty big difference between this and what I’m doing with StatTweets.com where I’m generating new content. I have quite a few new things planned to hopefully do a better job of tracking the live stream of sports tweets than just untargeted searches.
February 24th, 2009 at 7:13 am
Jason
Twackle just doesn’t seem like a service for me, however I was able to find my favorite teams to follow on statsheets so I was pleased with that for sure.
Thanks for the heads up statsheets has probably been out a little while and I just didn’t know it!
February 24th, 2009 at 9:48 pm
Thanks for your comments.
@MJMunson not sure why Twitter hasn’t done this yet…that’s a GREAT question. One solution you could look into for organizing tweets by topic would be to create groups in Tweetdeck for various followers/interests.
@Robbie I mentioned this on my email but wanted to answer here as well for others to see. I agree that there is a huge difference between what you’re doing with StatTweets–yours is obviously geared towards stats and is very powerful stuff!
Twackle is more of a service to see what fans are SAYING. Though you can already do some of this via search.twitter.com for specific keywords/topics, it is nice to have things all in one place, so you don’t have to do a bunch of different searches to see quick slices of conversations. I think there is value when you can simplify something like this for fans who aren’t as tech savvy and make it easy for them.