Jan
15

The mid-Winter goodness of release 46

We have completed work on a bunch of material, in order:

  • Added ability to make API queries based on location (e.g. give me all of the news and information for San Francisco)
  • Twitter accounts for the entire Premier League (even Liverpool)
  • We have 6,081 content sources, thanks to our man Greg Schneider

FanPick updates

  • We are showing a running tally of wins and losses in FanPicks on your profile page
  • Bug fixes to the FanPicks game
  • Your FanPick items now publish to Facebook so your friends can join you (you can shut it off by deleting it from your Facebook profile)
  • Top fans in the NFL, NBA and other sports are ranked by their ability to predict games using FanPick
  • We have a Leaderboard for all of you prognosticators

Next week we will have more gaming improvements.

Have a great weekend, FanFeedr

Dec
24

Release 43 is up

And next week we will have the super-fresh thing that we think you will find quite enjoyable.

The short list for this week:

  • We are providing better info in the search box (team names for players, columnists listed as such; go ahead, try it.)
  • Soccer scoreboard improved
  • We added in the complete list of authorized Twitter accounts from your favorites athletes, coaches, retired players, broadcasters and writers. Some of our favorites include Ted Leonsis (owns the Capitals), Alan Hahn (of Newsday), and Greg Aiello (of the NFL)

Have a great holiday, and thanks, FanFeedr

Nov
25

R39½ with all the fixin’s

With Thanksgiving around the corner (at least here in the States) we kept our cooks in the kitchen over the weekend, combining R38 and R39 into a cornucopia. Here are some of the things we’ve prepared before the holiday:

  • More relevant results for league content. With so many sources for league content, we decided to publish only the most noteworthy content items to make sure you can get the most important league news quickly.
  • Standings for leagues, conferences and divisions. See where teams are in their conferences and divisions at a glance.
  • Improved scores feed to the iPhone. We’ve added some special sauce to the way we publish scores to the iPhone push service, to make sure iPhone users get the latest updates without a fuss.
  • And of course, ever more content sources.

Enjoy your Thanksgiving weekend, and check back with us next week for new features and post-holiday diet tips. And Giants fans, please make sure you’ve fully digested your turkey before the game. As always, thank you for your support.

Until next time,
Your friends at FanFeedr.

Sep
04

Release 27: Housekeeping before the US Football onslaught

Housekeeping stuff this week, but let us wade into the details.

  1. We optimized the experience for first-time users coming to us from Twitter. They were churning off of the site at a higher rate than other users, in part because they didn’t have great context when they came to an article or video. We have a small welcoming experience for users who come to the site from Twitter, as of today.
  2. We also optimized the first-time user experience for people coming to us from Facebook, so that they get the initial welcome screen exposing them to the site’s functionality
  3. We created a series of feeds for our API partners so that they can get the full firehose of data, or a subset according to “strict” rules or the much sterner-sounding “severe” set of rules.
  4. We changed our feeds that we publish in Twitter to adhere to “Severe” filtering, thereby optimizing our feed results in Twitter (so that users there don’t get content about other teams.)
  5. We made sure that football boxscores work. They are functional for the NFL, and the NCAA will be up and running next weekend.
  6. We added about 50 news sources, including Dime Magazine, news about the University of Hawaii teams, and more.
  7. We also did some UX housekeeping as well. Look for a simpler interface next week, as we take to heart the usability testing we have been doing over the last two weeks.

As always, thanks for your support, and let us know if we have missed anything using the Feedback tab on the left of every page.

Ty

Aug
14

Release 24 for the weekend

Folks,

This week we have added Twitter integration using their super-transparent OAuth implementation. Which means that you can . . .

  • Post your status update to Twitter as well as Facebook
  • Send stories, videos and blog posts to Twitter

We have added the ability for you to follow your favorite teams ON Twitter, if you would prefer to do so there. So far we have all MLB baseball teams (like the Red Sox), and the top European football teams (like Barça). The NFL and colleges will be added next week, and the NBA and NHL in September.

We have also made some subtle changes to the typeahead box, so when you type any name, like, oh, say . . .

We show you whether it is a player, a team, a college, or a news source.

Speaking of news sources, these are some favorites that you may not know about:

  • Fantasy Players: Fantasy football news for the fantasy fan
  • Wages of Wins: Insanely detailed basketball commentary based on regression analyses, and the level of discussions in the comments is also rarified.
  • SLAM magazine: top-shelf hoops coverage

Also on the content side of things, we have added all of the NFL players who are tweeting.

Last but not least, a reminder about our iPhone application, for free, man, and a recent blog post about the company from our friends at Carrot, here.

Have a great weekend, FanFeedr

Jul
31

Release 22 with the good stuff is up

Hello there, sports consumer.

This week we have a chunk of good stuff for you.

API

  • We have 10 developers using our API, and we are looking forward to their output (which we will share)

User experience

  • We added top-level navigation to all of the major sports that we cover in the upper right-hand of the large search box on every page
  • We made it easier to see the login area
  • We added visual cues for the RSS feeds to make your RSS feed acquisition easier

Content
We have coaches of all of the major US sports in the kitty. Examples:

Other content:

Tech
Our new categorizer is going to make it easier to add new sports, so you will see:

  • Cricket
  • Rugby
  • Lacrosse
  • Cycling
  • Swimming
Jul
24

Release 21 is up for your sports edification

Things to enjoy:

  • More and better tennis content, including players such as Federer and Serena
  • More content sources (too numerous to count)
  • Better racing sections for NASCAR and Formula 1 (and their underlying teams)
  • Many more columnists
  • Ability to post your status updates directly to Facebook

As always, let us know what you think here, and let us know if we are missing any sites here.

PS We have an insane amount of Kentucky Wildcats news and information, if that is your thing.

May
22

Release 12 is live!

We just released Release 12 to the world. Goodies this week:

  • College sports are now focused exclusively on Division I. Sadly, this means there will be no more stories about the Haverford Flustered Pedants.
  • Conferences and soccer leagues. Now you can view content about the English Premier League, UEFA, the Pac 10 and the ACC on their own aggregation pages.
  • Significant under-the-hood improvements, clearing the way for us to add features in the weeks to come. Plus now the engine’s even louder when we rev it.

We’ve also added some interface touches here and there, based on your cards and letters. Accordingly, please keep them coming via the Feedback tab on the left side of every page.

Thanks,

Your friends at FanFeedr.

May
15

Release 11 is up

home

And that means a bunch of things:

  • The home page has changed. The first version had a little bit too much going on, so we simplified it and tried to make it more relevant. This includes providing you with a single feed of your favorite team information and social activity by your friends and people you follow.
  • We also changed the name and nature of the FanFeed. It covers all of the above. To just get news, video and tweets, click on “Your Content.“
  • We added colleges and universities. Right now we are showing everything, including the Division III powerhouse, Haverford College, but we will shortly focus on Div. I teams.
  • We improved the way we categorize sports, so you should see more relevant material in your feed.
  • We also changed the color of the sports icons that you see here, thanks to the smart talents of the super-talented Jennifer Gormley, who also provided the very Roger Blackian background for our Twitter page.

And some other odds and end that will put you to sleep but make the site better.

As always, let us know what you think via the Feedback tab on the left side of the site.

Thanks, Feed of Fans

May
08

Release 10 is up

And that means a bunch of things:

  • Images are associated with posts where we have them. We will add more photos over time.
  • The page titles reflect the content of the page (instead of saying “Fanfeedr” at the top of every page)
  • Full Twitter readouts so that athlete tweets don’t get truncated
  • Hotness across the site works
  • We sped up the type-ahead in the search box
  • We added rosters for a number of sports
  • We added in charts, on each search bar in the upper left.
  • Your comment activity shows up on the activity feeds
  • Reduced the size of the team logos so that your eyes don’t fall out of your head
  • We added 500 athlete and coach Twitter feeds

And some other odds and end that will put you to sleep but make the site better.

As always, let us know what you think via the Feedback tab on the left side of the site.

Thanks, Fan of Feeds