FanFeedr News launched back early December to become a spoke to the FanFeedr hub. Site goals were set to be the news outlet reporting breaking news and to drive traffic back to the main site. The staff consisted of three writers posting game previews, recaps, league power rankings and top stories across the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL & European soccer.

For the month of December, traffic was modest at best due to limited resources and bandwidth.

During the month of January, FanFeedr News decided to bring on 20 team columnists across the four major sports, college basketball and soccer. The columnists covered the games of their assigned teams by writing previews, recaps and features. Fresh content was constantly posted increasing the reach of FanFeedr. However, this was more of a case of a higher quantity than overall quality. The content from the site did not really stand out and got lost in the weeds.

Greg Schneider, FanFeedr community manager, proposed a different approach for FanFeedr News to shake things up. The focus of FanFeedr News should be more timely and more aware of the hottest sports stories a la Deadspin. A team of three writers (Joe Gill, Shlomo Sprung & Paul Farrell) would now generate content based on NFL Head Coaching moves, European Soccer Transfer News, power rankings across all sports & buzz worthy stories.  The rest of the staff would continue with their quality team coverage as before.

The experiment has been a resounding success. As the New Approach Snap Shot illustrates below, the site experienced dramatic traffic growth. The staff is extremely excited about this outcome.

NEW APPROACH SNAP SHOT

Below is a traffic comparison before (Jan. 6-15) & after (Jan.16-25) new approach:

• Visits increased 110%
• Unique visitors increased 123%
• Page views increased 86%

MONTH BY MONTH SUMMARY

Below is a January (based on 25 days) vs. December (based on 31 days) traffic comparison:

• Visits increased 135%
• Unique visitors increased 119%
• Page Views increased 126%

With this new found success and re-positioning, FanFeedr News has been re-branded FanFeedr Hot Takes. FanFeedr Hot Takes strives to be the one stop shop for team news and buzz worthy content.

Features, bug fixes, and more.

• User experience
• Made it so you can click photos directly from the home page
• Made it so you can click a photo to see the next in the series, ad infinitum
• We added in a widget on NFL team pages in partnership with Fanatics that allows you to get the best team merchandise, like, oh, say, a Tebow jersey
• Added in a widget for new users coming from Twitter and Facebook to better explain the interface
• Created a press room with mentions of FanFeedr in the news

• API
• We remedied having multiple representation of the same team for NCAA events
• Fixed the NFL next game query
• Fixed a bug that made events/last results inaccurate
• Deleted an events “geo” call that existed in the documentation, but, unfortunately, not in real life
• Amended calls for home/away teams, which were occasionally getting transposed
• Made it so that the player’s name was linked to his player ID in boxscores

As always, thank you for your support, FanFeedr

FanFeedr News is currently looking for talented sports columnists with WordPress experience to cover teams across the NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL, Soccer, College Hoops & Football.  FanFeedr News has a columnist incentive program in place which will pay you for your great content! After a 30-day trial period, you can earn upwards to $20 per post if you meet the traffic generation requirements.

Sounds good doesn’t it? What are you waiting for?

We are looking to hit the ground running in 2012, so contact us today. Please email Sports Editor, Joe Gill at joe@fanfeedr.com for further information.

We looking forward to you joining our team!

About FanFeedr

FanFeedr is the best source of sports news and information about your favorite professional and college sports teams.

We offer over 400 distinct, team-specific sites and social media accounts dedicated to providing the most timely and relevant news, photos, video, and sports data about the NFL, Premier League, MLB, NBA, NHL, NCAA Football and Basketball, and MLS. Our content is curated from over 10,000 global websites, newspapers, blogs, official team sites, and Twitter accounts.

Founded in 2008, the company is funded by private investors.

See Original Mashery Story By Clicking Here.

FanFeedr CEO Ty Ahmad-Taylor spoke at the ProMaxBDA Sports Media and Marketing Summit in NYC last month. He participated on the panel entitled, “NEXT: A Look at the Digital Tools, Apps and Social TV Technologies Changing the Way We Market.”  Joining Ty were Mike Folgner of Snappy TV, Fraser Kelton of GetGlue, Tim Mahlman of Klout and Deb Roy of Bluefin Labs. The discussion was moderated by John Young of Comcast Interactive Media.

Each panelist shared how their company is forcing “social” into the mainstream and learning how to augment media buys, drive incremental viewers, realize new business opportunities and develop strategies for integrating social technologies into a successful marketing mix. Ty Ahmad-Taylor explained how marketers can get closer to fans with FanFeedr through team pages and social channels.

For more information about this discussion please contact ty@fanfeedr.com.

This week’s release has several significant fixes.

• Added in a direct link to FanFeedr Hot Takes in the main navigation. Please check it out for super-timely insights into what people are talking about in sports.
• Support for Internet Explorer 8 and Internet Explorer 9
• Fixes for Firefox to see the entire stories

• RSS feeds: get your favorite team news directly in your favorite news readers, like Google Reader, Flipboard, or My Yaho0!
• New York  Jets
• New England Patriots
• FC Barcelona
• Arsenal
• New York Yankees
• Boston Red Sox, for example

It is our goal for FanFeedr.com to be as stable and usable as possible.  With that goal in mind, we will be scheduling roughly an hour of down time next week to make improvements to our servers that will result in the site being unavailable.

We will know the exact time frame early next week.  We apologize in advance for the inconvenience.

Follow us on Twitter and/or Facebook for the latest updates.

- The FanFeedr Team

UPDATE: The downtime is scheduled for this afternoon and will occur for about 90 minutes.  Thank you for your patience.

-The FanFeedr Team

Philadelphia Eagles’ Other View Widget powered by the FanFeedr Publishers’ Dashboard

We recently launched our widget generator, available now, for sports sites.

Why would I add a FanFeedr content widget to my site?

The Publishers’ Dashboard enables you to produce real-time, constantly-updated widgets based on a team, league or player of your choosing.

• Perhaps you write a blog on the New England Patriots and you want to drive deeper engagement to your site.
• The widget displays the best real-time breaking team news that will keep your readers informed about their favorite franchise.
• Rather than being one of many sources of content about a team or league, the FanFeedr widget allows you to be the best place to get news and information.
• This translates into longer stays with your site (third-party sites create a new tab or window) and more repeat traffic.

Carl Desberg, content manager of  Boston Sports Then And Now, explains the value that FanFeedr API widgets bring to his site:

“Boston Sports Then and Now has been growing by leaps and bounds over the past several months, as content and exposure is at an all time high. We are  looking to keep our readers, as up-to-date as possible and make our site a one-stop-shop for Boston Sports news. Now, not only can you read our insightful blog posts, but you can stay on top of your favorite Boston teams.  With the Bruins and Patriots FanFeedr widgets on our homepage, fans no longer have to go anywhere else for breaking news about their favorite teams.”

Boston Sport Then & Now’s Patriots News Widget powered by the FanFeedr Publishers’ Dashboard

How difficult is it to generate and install?

You don’t have to be a HTML guru to produce these widgets.

• FanFeedr does all the hard work for you.
• The user-friendly instructions will enable you to produce widgets in minutes.
• You can customize the size of the widget and how many news items that will be displayed.
• Press save, cut and paste the generated code into a Word Press blog or website.
• You now have your own team/league newsroom embedded on your site.

Don’t take it from us, listen to what Chris Rott of Fantasy Football Gator had to say:

“FanFeedr has developed a superb image-delivery solution. Thanks to the simplicity of the FanFeedr API, we were able to integrate “play-of-the-day” action images into our Fantasy Football Web site within just a few hours. In addition, the FanFeedr AJAX interface is built on well-known standards that are efficient and easy to implement in either JavaScript or PHP. This flexibility has allowed us to fully automate the administrative aspects of the image-delivery process, helping us to deliver a solid and reliable service to our customers.”

With Fanfeedr API widgets, you too can make your site a hub for sports news.

For more information on the Fanfeedr API widget please CONTACT publisher@fanfeedr.com.

The only sports page that avid sports fans need – delivering the best, curated sports content in the business

NEW YORK, Nov. 30, 2011 — The new FanFeedr Sports Network (http://www.FanFeedr.com) offers over 400+ robust, team-specific sites and social media team accounts dedicated to providing the most timely and relevant news, photos, video, and sports data for the top sports.

“FanFeedr’s key differentiator is that it has created 400+ FanFeedr Branded Team Sites directly on Facebook and Twitter in addition to its website. What is key is that busy people can see everything their team is doing without ever leaving Facebook or Twitter to get their curated sports news from thousands of sources. Big sites like ESPN and Yahoo Sports do not offer individual team news with the breadth that FanFeedr offers up. FanFeedr has more team accounts that any other service on the Web,” said Ty Ahmad-Taylor, Founder and CEO of FanFeedr.

FanFeedr is not just another aggregator; content is curated from over 9,000 global sources ranging from newspaper beat reporter articles, blogs and Tweets, the top blogs, official league and team sites, Getty Images and AP photos, authenticated player and coach Tweets and much more.

FanFeedr’s product team listened closely to its user base of avid sports fans to better understand their desires regarding the content they wanted most, and how they wanted to consume it. The result of this effort is the new FanFeedr, which provides sports fan consumers with the most comprehensive lens into what’s happening with their favorite teams.

It is drop dead simple! FanFeedr now makes it easy for users to get the best real-time content for their favorite teams. Fans can either go directly to FanFeedr’s new website and pick their favorite team and immediately get all of the best, real-time, curated news and information — in ONE place. Or they can access their favorite team directly on Facebook and Twitter.

As an example, a Washington Redskins fan that’s logged into Facebook or Twitter and wants the latest news on his or her team can get it in one of three ways:

• Directly on FanFeedr
• Directly on Facebook
• Directly on Twitter

After months of rigorous customer development, the FanFeedr team developed the new FanFeedr Sports Network using lean startup techniques to isolate the core features that any fan of a sports team could possibly want. The design has been hailed as smart and elegant, and easy-to-use by leading user experience people like Mignon Khargie, the award-winning head of design for Salon Internet, as well as the site’s everyday users.

During the customer development process, FanFeedr deployed its unique “social sensing” technology, that not only determines the value of each piece of content, but also the overall value of each content provider, whether it is a national sports site, newspaper, blogger or Twitter account. “Our ‘social sensing’ approach is at the heart of FanFeedr’s curatorial process, which assures our users that they are receiving only the most relevant sports content for their favorite teams,” said Ahmad-Taylor.

Additionally, FanFeedr also uses a proprietary social algorithm to determine the interestingness, or hotness, of each piece of content.

Ahmad-Taylor predicts that a major market trend is happening right now with users consuming their content of interest for their favorite sports teams via social media channels on their mobile devices. Adds Ahmad-Taylor: “FanFeedr provides the best information along a fan’s ‘interest graph,’ as opposed to their ‘social graph,’ and we have been doing it longer and better than anyone else.” It is an untold story because Comscore and Quantcast are unable to track this type of user behavior on Facebook and Twitter. This is done by understanding the social value of each piece of content, as determined through sharing and reading gestures across all of Twitter and Facebook. FanFeedr now derives over 80% of its traffic through the team accounts on Facebook and Twitter and does not get any credit for that traffic from the traditional traffic tracking sources.

“We have learned a great deal from the consumption habits and desires of FanFeedr’s loyal users over the past two years since our initial launch,” said Ahmad-Taylor. “And today, we are launching the next generation of FanFeedr, which I believe will deliver the best user experience possible for sports fans to follow their favorite teams.”

Mr. Ahmad-Taylor has been speaking across the country about the convergence of sports and social media and how they are aligning today.

• November 15, 2:30, Ty spoke at the Sports Media Marketing Summit at the Hudson Theatre in NYC: http://prod.promaxbda.org/smm/summit/schedule.aspx
• Ahmad-Taylor recently spoke at the 9th Annual IMG/Sports Business Journal Marketing Symposium in October. He was joined on the panel with Nick Grudin, Facebook; Omid Ashtari, Twitter; and J. Crowley of foursquare. (http://blog.fanfeedr.com/2011/10/fanfeedr-at-the-sports-business-journal-conference-with-facebook-twitter-and-foursquare/)

ABOUT FANFEEDR: The Best Place to Get Your Team News

FanFeedr is the pioneer in the convergence of sports and social media and is positioned as the leader in real-time sports content. Based in Dumbo, Brooklyn, NY, FanFeedr is a real-time personalized stream service. The company has delivered the best team-specific news and information since it launched in 2008. FanFeedr has new partnerships with the NFL, SB Nation, the Washington Redskins, Philadelphia Eagles and over 1,300 developers that reach more than 34MM uniques a month. For more information about the company, go to http://news.fanfeedr.com/about/.

MEDIA CONTACT:
Amy Bonetti
Big Mouth Public Relations
415-407-9008
amy@bigmouthpr.com

This press release was issued through eReleases(R).  For more information, visit eReleases Press Release Distribution at http://www.ereleases.com.

The new FanFeedr News A sports blog launched earlier this month. What will differentiate version 2.0 from it’s predecessor, Standing Room Only, is the in-depth sports coverage and robust news content aggregated from FanFeedr.com.  Our staff brings you all of the hot topics and stories from around professional Soccer, NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, and NCAA.

If  its newsworthy, you will find it here.

FanFeedr Sports Editor, Joe Gill brings you all the NFL action you could possibly want. He will have weekly previews of all the NFL match-ups. Each report will bring you the Best of the Best previews from around the Web. Want hot takes of your favorite team prior to the game? It’s all here.

When the games conclude, Joe brings you the best recaps, game MVPs, hot takes and video highlights from around the NFL. This is your one stop for post-game coverage.

Our weekly feature for all the NFL and Fantasy Football junkies, the NFL All-FanFeedr Team, brings you all the studs that were instrumental in their team’s victory. If you fielded this roster, you would have won your fantasy league by a landslide.

As we all know, NFL fans have an insatiable appetite for news, so time to strap on the NFL Feed Bag. The Feed Bag highlights the fantastic finishes, best touchdowns, marquee games, studs and duds of the week in the National Football League.  After feasting on all of this NFL content, there will be no room for seconds.

Check out the all new FanFeedr News today! You won’t be disappointed.

Cheers,

Joe Gill. Sports Editor, FanFeedr