I am very excited to announce that ESPN and Tilt (formerly CrowdTilt) have teamed up to make you fantasy football experience even better. With Tilt, ESPN fantasy leagues can now manage dues and payments through our integration here: espn.tilt.com. It's really simple, intuitive and fun. And of course, download the apps here: ESPN Fantasy on iOS ESPN Fantasy on Android
More on WSJ: ESPN Adds Tilt’s Group Payment Tech to Fantasy Football Apps
[youtube.com/watch?v=1_ElUsEcTh0]
Introducing ESPN's new Fantasy Football apps for 2014 - available now on iOS and Android. Highlights of this release are:
- Entirely new visual design - Full relaunch of the Android application - League creation and drafting from your mobile device - Get a team & join a league from your mobile device - Invite your friends with email, Twitter, Facebook Messenger or text message - Free alerts for injuries, scores, trades, and more - Fantasy News and Videos from ESPN Fantasy Football analysts.
And here are a couple of The Commish ad spots running on TV and other media:
[youtube.com/watch?v=_MtIC9AwtsI]
[youtube.com/watch?v=xt7q_cnkXas]
I am a sucker for year-end lists. I wanted to share a few great posts from '13 - which is terribly far from complete... if you have other's to share, please email or comment. In no order, whatsoever:
- The 30 Best Pieces of Advice for Entrepreneurs in 2013 - FirstRound.com - 2013: The Year in Interactive Storytelling - NYTimes.com - Designing for Exponential Trends of 2014 - LearningbyShipping.com - The Year in Review - The Verge - The Most Popular Quartz Stories of 2013 - Qz.com - Top 11 Mobile Trends of 2013 - RWW.com - The 25 Most Popular Nieman Lab Stories of 2013 - NiemanLab.com - RipTide: An Oral History of the Epic Collision Between Journalism and Digital Technology, from 1980 to the Present - RipTide - Facebook's 2013 in Review - Facebook - The Facebook Annual - Facebook via SlideShare - Google Zeitgeist 2013 - Google - Who Won 2013? - Grantland - 2013 - the Year in Digg - Digg
It's an annual geeky, blogging tradition: share those products and services that have made their way into your daily routines. It's a simple reflection on those experiences that have become meaningful, those that have become less relevant, and those that others find interesting and useful. Mike Arrington used to publish an annual, very simple list of "Products I Cannot Live without": 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006. And like many others, I did the same. It's fun to revisit them and see which habits have stuck and, much more likely, what's changed.
So continuing the tradition - here is a simple, incomplete version of those products I use habitually in 2013... and notice that most of mobile focused and freemium models.
Spotify (Premium) I've been a paying subscriber from day one and have always thought that their pay-for-mobile-model is brilliant... it allows users to get hooked through the desktop & web (their web product is a little-known gem), build playlists & favorites on the best and biggest screen available, and then roadblocks mobility. Smart.
Side note: Sean Parker's Hipster International is a great lesson in the power curation. Forbes has a great piece on it.
Evernote (Premium) Organize the web, your email, images, and so forth. The Chrome extension is fantastically done. And their mobile application suite gives quick access to important documents from any device, anywhere.
Dropbox (Premium) Like Evernote, it's a product that I use multiple times a day - personally and professionally. And like Evernote, it becomes more powerful (and habitual) as I move between different devices and locations. Between products like Evernote, Dropbox, SpaceMonkey, iCloud, Gmail, etc - I could purchase a new computer tomorrow and be fully setup / connected minutes later.
MobileDay Such a simple, time-saving app: one-touch dialing into conference calls.
Nike+ Running I have used all of the wearable devices (Jawbone Up, Nike Fuelband, Fitbit) - but, while each is impressive in its own way, I haven't made one part of my daily routine. I continue to come back to the old-reliable Nike+ Running app. The app is well done, relatively accurate, social and fun.
MyFitnessPal Simply and effectively monitor your eating habits and caloric intake. The interface (on iOS and Android) is simple and many foods can be uploaded through bar code scanning. And while MyFitnessPal is part of my daily routine - the power of the application is that it changes your routine. (Note: I am an investor)
ESPN SportsCenter Of course it's a biased habit, but I use the SportsCenter application several times a day for scores, news, and video.
StoryBots This is less about my daily habit - and more about my three-year old son's... but Dillon uses the StoryBots suite of mobile applications almost daily. Their digital books and learning videos are fun and smart. StoryBots is created by JibJab and has a premium, monthly subscription. A great, related read: the New York Times' Babes in Digital Toyland piece over Christmas weekend. (Note: Polaris is an investor)
Amazon Prime (paid) Our house runs on Prime... and has for years. From diapers to foods to gadgets. And based on holiday 2013, 20m other households now run on Prime too.
Also: Amazon's Instant Video (free with Amazon Prime) is a remarkably under-the-radar, under-appreciated service. The library rivals that of other services and the kids content is really expansive.
TestFlight (paid) A necessary, efficient tool to provision access to application builds. We use TestFlight internally and externally - from testing to PR. Similarly, I use TestFlight to test and play with friends' or portfolio's applications.
Proto.io (paid) There are several tools available for quick prototyping... About a year ago I played around with Proto.io and have been actively using it since. Really intuitive and simple way to craft quick prototypes, distribute them and collect feedback. Excellent product.
Jot Pro I do a lot of light-weight product sketching on my iPad and have gravitated to the Jot Pro stylus by Adonit. It's sturdy, accurate, and cheap. I tend to use the Noteshelf iPad application... but anything will do. Side note: Adonit and Evernote have teamed up on a new stylus... I have not played with it yet, but it looks intriguing.
Skitch (an Evernote Product) I use Skitch multiple times per day - almost always via the the Mac OS app - although the Chrome Extension does the job as well. It's a simple, effective way to do quick screenshots, light-weight editing, and sharing. The Evernote integration easily saves images to specific folders (although it can be a memory hog if you're not a premium user).
FaceTime From family to work calls and candidate interviews, FaceTime is tremendous and far preferable to a phone call. But when video is not an option: try FaceTime audio. It's digital over wifi (so saves minutes) and the quality is remarkably crisp.
Photography Suites (paid) So many applications and photo tools - it's impossible to list them all... but I'll try with those that I use regularly: - Path, I still consider Path's lenses and filters to be the best - Camera+, great for shooting photos on iOS - Instagram, the quality of the content stream is remarkable. From friends to special-access accounts like Duke Basketball - Photoshop - Apeture, lightweight editing and management - Skitch, less around photos and more around screen caputres
Facebook & Facebook Messenger More and more of my communication has shifted to Facebook messages... and much through the Messenger application.
Apple TV & ChromeCast Each TV in our house is connected to either an Apple TV or a ChromeCast. With Apple TV, you have iTunes Radio and the immediate accessibility of movies, Netflix, Watch ESPN, etc. ChromeCast is remarkably simple and priced perfectly. And if you have a ChromeCast, here are 10 tips to get more out of it.
iPad Air I use my iPad Air more than any other device - including my laptop. It is so light and so fast. The most incredible part: it is as powerful as the original Macbook Air (2008). And if you cannot get over typing on the iPad, get a <$100 ultra-thin bluetooth keyboard.
Google Nexus 5 Not enough attention is given to this device. It is cheap ($349 unlocked), fast, light, and runs on native KitKat. I love the form factor and the Google Now / OK Google integration is fantastic.
NiteIze Gear Ties These things are brilliant and I go through them like candy... simple way to keep your cables organized. With daily use, they last 6-12 months and are an easy add-on to any Amazon order.
Facebook's mobile app install units are a hit. In spring 2013, Facebook had announced that 25 million app downloads had been driven through the iTunes App Store and Google Play. At the time, over 40 of the top 100 top grossing apps for both iOS and Android were leveraging Facebook's mobile install units.
The unit's success makes sense because:
1) those applications are natively integrated with Facebook (so it's efficient, familiar and easy) 2) they are social and data rich (ie "150 friends are using the application") 3) ... which in turn means that the game / application itself is inherently social and welcoming
Yesterday, I saw the following unit for the first time, which is a natural extension of the install unit... but driving traffic around media. The unit promotes the movie Elysium and links directly to iTunes. As Facebook experiments more and more with ratings, reviews and public content (ie hashtags, celebrities, etc) - this becomes more and more engaging.
It's Saturday, the day after Black Friday, and my inbox is loaded with promotions about expiring offers, extended sales, and upcoming Cyber Monday. It reminded me that this shopping holiday relies heavily on email, GMail's new format now has a very significant impact, and that I had written an unpublished, related blog post about the subject early in November... Here it is!
Much has been made about the new Gmail interface and it's implications on email delivery / readership. Gmail now organizes emails algorithmically (Primary, Social, Promotions and Updates). This effectively filters emails from brands and commerce providers into sub-folders like Promotions and Updates. And while it is consumer friendly (I much prefer it) - it has significant implications for on commercial providers.
There are some good pieces about those effects - including from MailChimp who claims that open rates across their network drooped from 13% to 12%. Litmus did a similar study and noted a 7.75% decrease in Gmail open rates.
Perhaps that is why Bonobos sent the following email over the weekend. Instead of merchandising new products or a sale - the emails's primary (and only!) purpose is to have recipients move Bonobos into the Primary inbox.
Not only is that savvy - it is proof of how important email is to merchants... and how important these interface changes can be.
On Thursday, we launched the new SportsCenter Application, an update to ESPN's existing and popular ScoreCenter application. With 50m downloads and millions of daily users, ScoreCenter is certainly successful and our hallmark application. We didn't set out to replace it; rather, we set out to expand the experience and better present the vast array of content that makes ESPN so special: video, articles, imagery, television clips, social activity, statistics, and more. You can get it here: - for iOS: http://es.pn/scapp - for Android: http://es.pn/scappandroid - Or, dial **SC from your cell phone
A handful of product highlights
- Scores / News / Now: ScoreCenter delivered scores and stats... SportsCenter does that alongside News (video, highlights, articles, analysis) and ESPN Now (tweets and live scores) - SportsCenter's Best Of: The SportsCenter Tab is the best stuff of the day (games, breaking news, analysis), merged with your favorite team scores. - Personalization & Inbox: The focus of the app is on delivering a personalized experience through alerts, favorite teams, and the new Fan Inbox (which is a personalized feed of your favorite teams' news, highlights and scoring alerts). - Clubhouses: My favorite enhancement is the introduction of Team Clubhouses. Fans can quickly access each team's scoreboard, newsfeed and social feed... and set alerts directly within the Clubhouse.
Here is a screenshot of the Duke Football Clubhouse which is noteworthy for a few reasons. First, it is relatively long-tail content that would not elevate to the national level - but it is important to me. Second, the content is fantastic. These are in-game highlights, streaming live into the feed seconds after they occur on the field. It's a tremendous experience that is highly personalized.
That's the new app. I hope you download it, enjoy it and pass along feedback. I also thought it would be worthwhile to share some takeaways:
It's a Mobile World
A couple weeks ago, I wrote about ESPN's recent digital patterns. September was a record month for ESPN in three ways: 1. we saw record overall traffic 2. during that period, more fans accessed ESPN via mobile than desktop 3. over 36% of users accessed ESPN exclusively via mobile
It's a mobile world. The focus on re-imagining ScoreCenter was predicated on better serving our fans in an increasingly mobile world. And if you haven't done so already, read Benedict Evan's Mobile is Eating the World deck.
It's a Native Mobile World
It's a mobile world... but it's also a native world for applications. Long gone are the days or porting a single app from platform to platform. Users don't want this... and neither do the platforms themselves. Experiences have to be built and designed specifically for the platform and the device portfolio. The challenge of course is to maintain brand familiarity and consistency while also designing differently and specifically for each platform. It's a difficult but critical balance.
Native also applies to platforms beyond the mobile operating systems (ie iOS, Android, etc). For instance, we took care to make sure that the application leverages native integrations with Twitter and Facebook - both within the application and within their own platforms. This, for instance, is a screenshot of the new Twitter Card integration:
Disrupt Yourself
AllThingsD wrote a nice piece on the SportsCenter launch entitled: "ESPN ScoreCenter App Is a Hit, but It’s Getting an Overhaul Anyway: New Name, More Video, More Stuff". It's an important mentality: don't wait for something to break before considering / forcing change. The world changes too fast - technology, platforms, standards, habits - to sit still.
Scaled, Pre-launch Distribution and Usage
Between services like TestFlight and Google Beta, it is relatively painless to distribute pre-launch builds and collect usage data / feedback from large numbers of relevant users. It's the purest form of user-testing and user-feedback. For SportsCenter, somewhere around 1,500 fans played with the application ahead of launch. Others like Facebook are doing that at grand scale using the Google Beta program:
Press as Pre-Launch Users
My friend Matt Schlicht of Hipset recently wrote a nice Medium piece about driving press for your startup. My strong opinion here: treat everyone as a user and a fan. SportsCenter received some excellent coverage and those writers had access to the test builds of the application for several days (or more). That translates into more organic coverage (good or bad), deep insight, and some unique perspectives. It is also how pieces like Ryan Lawler's on TechCrunch get written - where he had a fantastic, in-depth usage video.
Advice: trust that your product is high-quality and give users and writer's full, early access.
A couple other pieces: - TechCrunch: ESPN’s SportsCenter App Combines News And Highlights With New Personalization Features - AllThingsD: ESPN ScoreCenter App Is a Hit, but It’s Getting an Overhaul Anyway: New Name, More Video, More Stuff - PandoDaily: ESPN Launches Personalized SportsCenter Feed Web App, Proves It Just Gets Digital - AdAge: This Is 'SportsCenter'...on Your iPhone
Twitter As Real-Time Customer Service
This is obvious for most: Twitter is immensely powerful as a real-time insights and customer support platform. During launch, we were seeing 50+ tweets per minute. Between sentiment tracking, bug monitoring and usage habits - we had an immediate understanding of how fans were engaging and interacting. This isn't shocking to anyone... but one point worth noting: I have spent a lot of time responding to tweets of all ranges: positive, negative, open questions, etc. Users were almost always happy to hear from someone connected to the product. Feedback was universally helpful and, even when a user was unhappy, the outcome was positive.
Kudos to ESPN dev for actually inquiring about feedback on the SportsCenter app.
— Brandon Garrett (@bgarrett7) November 23, 2013
It's Iterative
There are things we got wrong. There are things we had to cut due to time. And there are things we didn't get to but are on the roadmap.
It's an iterative process. It has to be... in part because user feedback will dictate changes and time won't allow for everything to built. The challenge is determining what viable release requirements are... and communicating iteration to users.
I'm Old
Along with the core team, we read every single tweet. The big lesson: my vocabulary is very out of date, emoji are king, and I'm clearly old.
The month of September was noteworthy for ESPN's digital properties for a few reason. First: scale. Not only did ESPN reach a record 72.7 million unique visitors - it marked the the largest monthly reach ever within the entire sports category. ESPN accounted for 30% of all sports category usage - more than the Nos. 2 and 3 sports properties combined (Yahoo! Sports and NBC Sports Network, and NFL Internet Group). Second: this was the first month in which more unique people visited ESPN mobile (mobile web and applications) than ESPN.com (47.4m vs. 46.1m). As technology, habits and our product portfolio changes - this trend will continue. And if this shift in usage hasn't yet occurred on your properties... it's a matter of time.
Third: related to the above point, ESPN saw 26.5m users exclusively access ESPN via mobile.... an even more pronounced shift in usage.
More: - ESPN Media Zone - MediaPost - Poynter
Facebook recently enabled embeddable posts (see announcement here) - theses embeds can include public status updates, images, videos, etc and enable social sharing directly within the unit. On Wordpress, it's particularly easy: simply paste the Facebook URL between the Wordpress embed tags. That easy. For Facebook, this is important for two obvious reasons: first, it encourages public posting for users and celebrities (brands are already public). And second, it gives publishers and brands a simple way to amplify their on-Facebook content - which in turn enables social sharing directly on the publisher site. Twitter has had great solutions here for years - Facebook's embeddable post can be an equally powerful mechanism (content dependent of course).
[embed]https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=638282669523912&set=a.166942843324566.37299.147262525292598&type=1[/embed]
[embed]https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=613289692051124&set=a.114588455254586.5908.104266592953439&type=1[/embed]