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BREAKING NEWS & VIEWS
NFL.com Drafts a Manageable Mob The site hosted live coverage of the NFL draft on April 25 - 26 that included video, interactive features and team-specific “war rooms” where users could chat about their favorite team in real time as the draft picks were announced. War room members experienced the event with like-minded people and also monitored the buzz going on in rival team rooms. Sports fans love their statistics, and the War Room concept seemed to rack up the points for the site. During a three-week span in April, the areas generated 228,529 comments. And, of course, in sports, just about every move can become a competition. So when it comes to bragging rights over being the most dedicated fans, the Broncos came in first with 23,410 fan comments, with 18,619 for the second-place Raiders. The payoff for NFL.com was a spike in hang time. The average visitor spent 45 minutes on the site during the draft weekend, up 153% over last year. On Twitter, the draft attracted 48,000 followers. Trying to create shared social experiences online but around real world or simulated events has been an ongoing project for digital publishing. Virtual 3D worlds like Second Life have tried to play host to simulated events and several streaming media providers have attempted to create chat rooms around simultaneous media viewings. The trick, however, comes in know what people are passionate about and organizing around already, and then creating social spaces for that. Here is where the creative role of the publisher comes into play with an online social space. Having a standard online community around the draft process at NFL.com would be standard operating procedure and likely attract a fair amount of users. But by dividing the community into respective teams and aiming the community toward kibitzing during draft decisions, NFL and Pluck were showing where and how editorial judgment can shape social media. They located the fan passion that informs the draft pick ritual and created tools that encouraged sharing. A user could also help broadcast the draft news with a widget for their own social profile pages and blogs. As publishers accept their evolving roles online as a site “host,” they will take more seriously the activity of creating themes and situations or even event-driven parties that become content. If, as we like to say, community is content, then content providers have to act more like party programmers. If you have breaking news to share please contact Steve Smith at ssmith@accessintel.com More Breaking News & Views
Breaking News & Views Archives COMMENTS
1.
You make a good point, but many groups find it easier to leverage the existing Second LIfe technology for these kinds of things, rather than "roll their own." Google "metanomics" and "science friday second life" to see how such things can work.
Posted by Lawson English on Tuesday, May 5, 2009 @ 08:16 PM
2.
How did you manage unpleasant behaviour? In my experience its very hard to manage forums like this and its not good for the brand
Posted by Spirevav on Wednesday, July 29, 2009 @ 04:14 AM
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