Take A Peck

I recently read an interesting white paper from IBM called “The Corporate Newsletter Goes Social: IBM and Employee-Centered Media.” It’s a great read about how IBM is utilizing social media to improve connections between employees, increase productivity and leverage knowledge across the organization.

One thing that caught my attention was the company’s effort called “The Greater IBM Connection.” According to the white paper, the goal of this program is to “build a professional network for current and former IBMers to network, collaborate and leverage social computing inside and ouside the corporation.” Greater IBM has established a presence on multiple social networks (LinkedIn, Facebook, etc) so people can choose how they want to stay connected to the organization. Since the days of having a job with one company for 50 years and then retiring are pretty much over, this is a great way for current and past employees to stay connected and share ideas.

I’m not sure if many other companies are doing something like this but I think it’s a great idea. I started thinking about how something like this could work in sports.

If they aren’t doing this already, I think it would make sense for leagues to start something similar (or bring the program online, if it already exists). Once you’re a professional athlete, it becomes part of who you are. This will always be part of your identity, even when you retire. For example, an NBA player should be part of the NBA family for life, and should want to give back to the game and help younger players succeed. Establishing a network like Greater IBM would be very beneficial for a number of reasons:

• Help former players stay in touch with each other so they can:
  •  share financial advice
  • explore business opportunities
  • talk about life after being a Pro
• Help connect former players with current players so they can help and give advice
• Help former players stay connected to the league so they can help in community service efforts and give something back to the game that gave them so much

I’d be willing to bet something like this already exists in some form for most leagues. But a program like this could be improved by taking advantage of social media tools to provide even more opportunities for connection.

What do you think?

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According to Mashable, Yahoo is testing a lifecasting service called Yahoo Live with its employees. According to Wikipedia, lifecasting is “is a continual broadcast of events in a person’s life through digital media.” As we’ve seen with blogs, social networking and YouTube, people love sharing their lives. Whether it’s for fame, fortune or just to be noticed, people are more and more willing to let others into their lives. With the rise of online video (and the number of laptops that are shipping with webcams), lifecasting should continue to become more popular with the younger crowd.

Lifecasting seems to have a few potential applications in the sports world. It’s really just an unfiltered blog (with video). What if teams provided an outlet for passionate fans to post videos of how dedicated they are. Offer an inside look at the life of a superfan, from what they do each day to keep up with their team, to how crazy they are on game days. This could be turned into a video series or show and teams could tie-in sponsors to generate more revenue.

A brand could sponsor a season-long lifecasting contest to identify the best superfan.

Teams could get players involved in lifecasting to offer an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at what it’s like to be a professional athlete. This could be tested around a player’s All-Star game appearance and could be continued depending on the interest it generates.

These are just a few ideas. What do you think about lifecasting opportunities in sports?

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Brian Clark over at Copyblogger recently wrote a post titled, “What’s a blog?” He says there are many “experts” who have blogging rules such as “blog posts should never be over 350 words,” and other rules that really don’t make any sense. His take on post length is that it depends– it depends on who the audience is, why you’re writing, what you want to accomplish, etc. He sums it up by saying, “You’re either writing something compelling that resonates with readers, or you’re not.”

What are my thoughts about “what is a blog?” I consider them testing-grounds for new ideas, so they can be spontaneous and unfinished at times. I think blogs don’t necessarily have to be formal or well-thought out. Mainly I think blogs are thought-outlets which should promote conversation and interest among your readers.

This holds true whether you’re blogging about sports, real estate or money. If your blog isn’t interesting, it’s not going to attract readers, and without readers, there can be no conversation. I’ll be the first to confess that I don’t always have the most thought-provoking posts that promote conversation, but I think that should be the goal.

Ultimately, blogs should be authentic. This means being open and honest and transparent about the purpose of the blog. A company shouldn’t pay someone to pretend to be a brand advocate and blog about it, and try to play it off as an authentic blog. A CEO should not have an intern write a blog for him and pretend that it’s his.

So those are my rambling thoughts right now about “What is a blog?” What do you think?

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Many leagues and teams are probably wondering what all this social networking stuff means (or if they aren’t they should be). Where should we try to establish presence? What site/s should we place content on? Where can we best reach our fans? Of course, there’s Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Plaxo, YouTube, in addition to other niche social networking sites. But the issue of who owns the data on each of these networks, and whether companies must create something new for each one has long been a problem. How does a brand/team/league choose which site to utilize?

Well, with the recent announcement from the Data Portability Workgroup, the answers to these questions may get a lot more simple. Check out wikipedia for more on data portability. Google, Facebook and Plaxo are all on board with the initiative. A recent announcement from the group said:

“… Users will be able to access their friends and media across all the applications, social networking sites and widgets that implement the design into their systems …” (thanks for the quote, Mashable)

Essentially this makes it much easier for brands to port their applications/widgets/data from one network to another. Instead of developing a separate app for presence on each of these sites, only one app will likely be needed to accomplish the same thing on many platforms.

Similarly, fans will be able to take data from their favorite sports apps/widgets with them when they go from one network to the next. They’ll be able to share the same data with friends from different social networking sites. This is great for brands/leagues/teams as it enables fans to spread their content much more easily, and this enables fans and individuals to engage with content on their own terms.

Today’s fans already have more control than ever before—they can watch what they want, when they want, how they want. The Data Portability movement will give both brands and people more control over content online; and should reduce the cost of entry for brands to develop apps/widgets, since they won’t have to develop independent apps/widgets for each platform.

Would love to hear your thoughts on Data Portability and how it relates to sports, marketing, and/or advertising.

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I apologize for the light posting recently. I’ve been traveling for work and am going down to Atlanta tomorrow for the Georgia Tech-UNC football game. While on the plane today, I was inspired by reading Fun is Good and I started brainstorming some crazy, off-the wall promotion ideas that sports teams could try. Here’s the best of the worst:

Barry Bonds Honesty Day - Inspired by Barry’s repeated denials of knowingly using PEDs, fans can talk/write about a time they  got caught for something and kept denying it, even when all evidence pointed the opposite way. The best denial wins free seat upgrades and a lie-detector test in between innings to see if he/she was really telling the truth or not.

Scott Boras Exaggeration Day - The man obviously way over-valued A-Rod and exaggerated his worth. On this special night, select fans give interviews about their wife/husband and the best exaggerator wins…

Rain Dance Night - We had a big drought in the Southeast this summer. While this was a serious issue and water restrictions had to be put in place, why not add a little humor to the situation and stage rain dance contests in between innings. The winner gets a year’s supply of bottled water from whoever the water/beverage sponsor is.

That’s all for now. Trust me when I say the rest of my ideas should never see the light of day. Peanut Butter and Jelly Night anyone??

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The mobile payments industry is going to get huge in the next few years. In 2006 Jupiter Research predicted that there would be $10 billion in mobile payments transactions by 2010. Already well established in Asia and parts of Europe, mobile commerce is only beginning to make its way to the US. While cellphone makers such as Samsung and Nokia make phones that utilize NFC (system for wireless data exchange) that lets consumers make purchases with their phones, the technology hasn’t been adopted quickly due to the fact that:

• Retailers don’t want to accept it until the mainstream crowd does, and majority of people won’t use it until it’s accepted by mainstream retailers
• Trust issues–Consumers need to be convinced that it’s safe

Despite some of these challenges, I think mobile payments will have huge applications in sports settings. Instead of waiting in long concession lines at games, you could text your order and pay for it with your phone, then receive a text when it is ready to be picked up. Instead of waiting in box office lines to buy tickets, you could buy tickets directly from your phone, have the ticket sent to your phone and then have it scanned immediately (similar to what some MLB teams are doing with paperless ticketing). This technology could also allow teams could run promotions where “cash” is transfered directly to fans’ cellphones. There are many more opportunities here, as the surface has really yet to be scratched.

There are a few companies in this space so far. GoMobo and Obopay are the two main contenders in the USA. Obopay is interesting in that anyone can use it; it works on any carrier or phone in the US. You can send money via text messaging, pay through a WAP site or download the Obopay application to your phone. This is a legit service — their partners include Citi, Verizon Wireless, Helio and AIM.

Currently Obopay’s mobile payment product is positioned as more of a “peer to peer” payment system like Paypal was when it was first launched. A good fit for Obopay that I can see myself using is for splitting up the dinner bill between a few people without the hassle of getting separate checks, tip, etc. It would also be convenient for college roommates to use for splitting rent and utilities.

On another note:
Don’t forget that the next edition of the Sports Business Blog Carnival will be live on October 8. You can submit a post at our blog carnival homepage.

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