Powered by the sun... for FREE!
Heard a radio ad for Westinghouse Solar Lighting during my run today.
The guy says these lights are “powered by the sun… for FREE!”
Then he asks, about the sun, “How do they stay in business?”
Well, the sun has a lot of users. They’ll figure out how to monetize later ;)
marty@fanchatter
@DJ_AM
I don’t know much about DJ AM (Adam Goldstein). I never saw him perform. I never (knowingly) heard one of his mixes. I remember he was in a plane crash and survived.
But I do know that he tweeted a rather haunting lyric from a Grandmaster Flash song on Tuesday, two days after he threw out the first pitch before a Mets game at Citi Field.
And it appears from the news that he died yesterday after doing some crack.
Strange seeing tweets from a dead guy. He was my age, too. 36.
I heard it said this week that Twitter is not a social network, it’s blogging for the masses. It gets mistaken for a social network, but it really just lets everybody blog and comment so quickly and easily that our lives and thoughts become revealed to people, even the ones we don’t know.
I also heard it said that Twitter founder Evan Williams predicted a new communications protocol and then made it come true.
That’s an impressive feat. And it’s made reading tweets from a dead guy possible and collectively mourning his loss a social event.
So I’ll join the millions on Twitter in saying RIP @DJ_AM.
Content sharing is king.
marty@fanchatter
See and download the full gallery on posterous
We made it in the StarTribune today
I don’t know how many times I’ve been mentioned in my hometown paper. Maybe once or twice as a high school athlete. Then again, maybe I’m making that up.
But it happened this morning in a nice piece by Thomas Lee of the StarTribune entitled “Two local start-ups get boost from Silicon Valley” .
My co-founder Luke Francl is the star along with Dave Fowler from our fellow Minnesota Y Combinator company SocialBrowse .
Paul Graham says community newspapers measure success by how many pictures of residents they can squeeze in to each edition. Makes sense.
Well, we didn’t get a picture, but the mention is nice.
marty@fanchatter
My Interview with @rscibetti and The Business of Sports
Here’s an email interview I did with Russell Scibetti (@rscibetti) for The Business of Sports blog . It provides a little background on me and also a sense of what we’re thinking about at FanChatter.Press Release: FanChatter Builds Momentum by Engaging Fans
The Y Combinator-backed company helps sports franchises and other businesses create a more profitable level of fan involvement in-venue and online through content sharing.
Mountain View, CA (PRWEB) August 4, 2009 — FanChatter, Inc., the mobile social fan engagement company, today announced it has received a seed round of funding from Silicon Valley investment firm Y Combinator.
The capital infusion comes during a highly productive summer for the Minnesota-based company, whose technology leverages social media to engage fans and generate more revenue for sports franchises and other businesses. In addition to doubling its client roster and updating its popular Scoreboard Photo Sharing feature, FanChatter recently introduced its new ChatterBox social media aggregator/publisher on the homepage of the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves.
ChatterBox displays a real-time feed of the social media conversation surrounding the Timberwolves in a single column on the team’s official website. Fans are invited to sign in with their Twitter and Facebook accounts and sort by their friends as well as publish their own chatter directly on the Timberwolves’ homepage. It debuted on July 11th at the start of the team’s NBA Las Vegas Summer League schedule and became an instant hit.
“We love it,” said Ted Johnson, Timberwolves Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer. “ChatterBox enables us to capture the online conversation about the Timberwolves and allows fans to participate right from our home page. Our fans love it too and tell us that they visit our site more often, primarily because there’s always something new to see or say in the ChatterBox.”
FanChatter’s Scoreboard Photo Sharing technology allows fans at stadium events to share their own mobile photos on the jumbotron for all to see. Approved photos are also posted to a branded web gallery in real-time, creating a popular attraction on the organization or sponsor website filled with images of fans having a good time.
The feature is currently in its second season with Major League Baseball’s Minnesota Twins and sponsor Qwest Communications, who have seen the average number of ”Qwest TwinsPics” received per game more than double since last year.
“Fans take a lot of photos at ballgames,” said FanChatter co-founder and CEO Marty Wetherall. “They chatter online during events. We allow organizations to harness this content in ways that not only benefit sponsors, but also leverage all the real-time engagement and data that fan content sharing provides.”
“Our clients and their sponsors have shown an appreciation for the fans’ point of view, and the fans are rewarding them with their attention,” said Wetherall. “The ChatterBox along with Scoreboard Photo Sharing effectively turn fans from customers into ‘users’, which in this sense means they’re actively engaged and participating on a recurring basis. That’s extremely valuable for any organization.”
FanChatter is actively seeking to add more sports franchises and sponsors to its growing client roster as well as social media forerunners in other event industries like music and television. Additional platforms including video sharing and mobile applications are in the works along with updates that will allow Scoreboard Photo Sharing and ChatterBox to work together as a real-time hub of fan content and engagement.
About FanChatter: FanChatter offers a platform for sports teams and other organizations to engage their fans through content sharing and generate more revenue through sales and sponsorships. As the first Y Combinator company originating out of Minneapolis, MN, FanChatter is operated by co-founders Marty Wetherall, Luke Francl, and Norm Orstad. Clients include the Minnesota Twins (MLB), the University of Oklahoma Sooners (NCAA) and the Minnesota Timberwolves (NBA) among several other professional and college teams and events. For an updated client roster visit http://fanchatter.com.
About Y Combinator: Y Combinator is a venture fund based in Mountain View, CA which focuses on seed investments to startup companies with “good” ideas. Described in Newsweek as “Silicon Valley meets Amercian Idol”, it offers financing and business consulting along with other opportunities to 2-4 person companies looking to take an idea to a product. The company made its first investments in Summer 2005 and successful exits by Y Combinator funded companies include Reddit, Omnisio and Zenter. Other successful companies that went through Y Combinator include Loopt, Justin.tv, Weebly and Scribd. For more information visit http://ycombinator.com
TechCrunch'd
We just made TechCrunch.
They misspelled “Oklahoma” in “The University of Oklahoma” and they caught a bad screenshot of our #Twolves ChatterBox (we’ve since fixed the extra scroll bars issue), but overall this is a very nice piece by Jason Kincaid. Thanks Jason.
I would like to clarify that ChatterBox is more that just another Twitter aggregator. We’re pulling in select blog links and soon we’ll be grabbing Scoreboard Photo Sharing photos and relevant content from other social media sites, all in real-time.
We also let fans connect with Facebook or sign in with Twitter (or, coming soon, BOTH) and chatter directly with optional posting back to those sites (allowing for faster chatter during games and events).
And fans can sort by chatter happening on-site (“HERE” tab) and also by their friends from Facebook and Twitter, enabling a real-time virtual viewing party with just the people you “know”.
Lastly, thanks to commenter Brandon Paton, who called Scoreboard Photo Sharing “pretty cool.” We think so too. It turns your audience into advocates and that’s all good.
Never been in TechCrunch. Now it’s time to ride the wave. Anyone know how to surf?
It's Happening...
Little by little, all-nighter by all-nighter, it’s happening…
Fans are sending more photos (see http://twins.fanchatter.com). Teams are understanding how a gallery full of happy fans at their games is a good thing to put on a team or sponsor website (http://leaderpost.rfp).
And our ChatterBox at http://timberwolves.com is proving that fans want real-time updates about their favorite teams and they want to participate in the conversation. When a team puts all of that on their HOMEPAGE, they turn their fans into users and engagement time goes through the roof.
It’s been a while since we announced our #RedSox FanChatter test and that early version has since been taken down, but we appreciate all the Red Sox fans who stopped by to check it out and we continue to admire their use of social media.
#Twolves FanChatter, along with our mobile fan photo galleries, are now the best examples we have of fan content sharing as a path to engagement that teams can LEVERAGE, and soon those two platforms will be working together… and they’ll be mobile… soon.
So many items in the backlog, so little time, but it’s happening…
#Twolves FanChatter is announced along with the signing of new Timberwolves guards Jonny Flynn and Wayne Ellington.
Yes, the future is looking bright…
