The NFL is upon us and ESPN is yet again your home for fantasy football. You can create or reactive your league here. Notably new for 2013: the ability to perform live and mock drafts directly from your iPhone and iPad. It's a terrific experience and screenshots are below.
You can download the ESPN Fantasy Football applications here: - iPhone (5 stars) - iPad (5 stars) - Android
And finally, here is one of ESPN's new Commish video units:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcrZ51O14Xc
This is the marketing text from Apple's "Designed by Apple" campaign (which launched a few months ago on television). I have been seeing the print ads more and more - and the text is really powerful. It of course holds true to Apple's hardware and software worlds - but it should resonate to any creator: focus, quality, satisfaction. This is it. This is what matters. The experience of a product. How it makes someone feel. Will it make life better? Does it deserve to exist?
If you are busy making everything, How can you perfect anything? We speed a lot of time On a few great things. Until every idea we touch Enhances each life it touches.
You may rarely look at it. But you'll always feel it. This is our signature. And it means everything.
Starting this past Thursday, ESPN.com comments are now done through Facebook comments / authentication.We had tested over the last several months on various ESPN properties like ESPNW, X Games, Grantland and ESPN's Major League Baseball section. The results were overwhelmingly positive and we are excited about the resulting quality of conversation and social connections made through ESPN + Facebook. With roughly a quarter-million comments each day, we are excited about this step forward and have more to come. Feel free to provide feedback.
"We want people to be candid -- actively engage in strong and thorough debate, but do it in a way without anonymity,” Patrick Stiegman, editor-in-chief of ESPN.com told Poynter. You can read Patrick's entire interview with Poynter here.
Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, took to Medium this week to share some thoughts on Facebook: "Now that I use Facebook more regularly, I started having some ideas for the service—here’s one... They could offer Facebook Premium. For $10 a month, people who really love Facebook (and can afford it), could see no ads. Maybe some special features too." First off, I like that he's doing this on Medium - a service / platform that I am really growing fond of... and a service / platform that encourages this kind of discussion from thinkers like Biz. (The other service I am enjoying: Branch, which enables discussion in a different, interesting way).
On Facebook Premium - it's the right idea, particularly for a service that so many users are so passionate about and dedicated to. At ESPN, we have a premium service called ESPN Insider that is sneaky-big itself and a combination of premium tools and content (ie Fantasy Football product enhancements and unique articles on recruiting, etc).
For me to pay a monthly subscription to Facebook - which I gladly would - I think it has to follow suit: it would have to be some specialized feature(s), enhancement(s), etc. My guess is that mobile and the mobile application are the biggest opportunities for those sorts of features.
And then there are single-use purchases as well: while Path is a much smaller community, my network has been gobbling up premium stickers ($1.99 each) to make conversation richer. And there are filters, etc. This is different than Facebook Gifts - which is really a one-to-one transaction rather than an enhancement that adds value to core product. Path's stickers, for example, have become mechanisms for comments / conversation... which of course has a viral loop.
The trouble with marking premium as ad-free is that it changes much of the Facebook experience. Sure there are ads that are not much different than traditional CPM advertising... but most are hybrids of advertising and social interactions. A couple questions arise including the central point that many of Facebook's units, while paid advertisements, are actually value-add to the consumer - for instance, the mobile application installer ('your friends are using xyz') is quite useful. What happens to the social and advertiser economy if certain friends pay to opt out? What happens to fans who want to follow brands onsite? Many brands are hybrids of paid and organic content, activity, etc. How does this effect Facebook's relationship with advertisers - whose network of users (and likely the most active, influential users) shrinks?
In short: if Facebook's ad strategy were solely traditional banners and units, it would be a far easier proposition to all (users, advertisers, etc). But the deep blending of advertising with social layers & interactions makes it far tougher. And that's a credit to Facebook because they are innovating on the ad experience. The premium opportunity better exists within premium features and products.
One of the great (maybe most under used?) Twitter features is mobile notifications. They are very valuable when used properly (ie following the right users) and overwhelming when used incorrectly (ie following too many people) - and Twitter recognizes this. Hence, Twitter is now recommending mobile notifications of recommended users on Twitter.com. Great in-the-river promotion that encourages cross device use (from web to mobile) and for users / content that they believe I will appreciate.
Below are subsequent Facebook posts by Nike Golf that uploads Tiger Woods' and Rory McIlroy's entire Nike outfitting - from shoes to clothing to clubs to balls. It's brilliant in its simplicity, timelines and relevance. It also shows the value of their athlete and sponsorship model: these are Nike golfers head to toe. And with one-click through Facebook, users arrive on Nike.com's shopping channel - where they can buy element by element. The only thing missing is a "purchase all" button. Nike and Titleist have used Facebook previously to tie results into products - but the direct tie to commerce and timeliness here is really compelling and interesting.
WatchESPN is now available on your Apple TV. Fans now have access to on demand video, live streaming games, and live access to ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPN3 and ESPN Buzzer Beater/Goal Line (some content requires video subscription from affiliated providers). There are now multiple ways to get WatchESPN content on your big screen: the Apple TV application and Airplay.
“HBO GO and WatchESPN are some of the most popular iOS apps and are sure to be huge hits on Apple TV,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. “We continue to offer Apple TV users great new programming options, combined with access to all of the incredible content they can purchase from the iTunes Store.”
- More on Apple.com - To access simply update your Apple TV software
Like several others (ie Medium, YouTube Channels), LinkedIn has made a strong bet on quality, unique content with their Influencer product. Today, this email arrived which is about as influential as it gets: Bill Gates sharing insights from his influencer, Warren Buffett. It's Bill Gates' first post and he already has 25,000 followers.
And that raises the interesting balance between private and public content and personas. There is now a public persona for Gates (you can follow him) and a private relationship with Gates (the traditional LinkedIn model). We have seen this balance on Facebook: friends vs. followers and now private content with public hashtags:
The tax of new thinking and building... I like that term set by Julie Zhuo on PandoDaily. The tax is not just the challenge of thinking and building... it's the challenge of shifting prior and current momentum (philosophically, emotionally, actually, etc). It's the challenge of placing yourself and your experiences onto unknown paths. But that is of course how any great idea occurs - not through incremental thinking but from the new.
"The tax that comes with introducing any new feature into your product is high. I cannot stress this enough. Sure, maybe the new feature isn’t hard to build, maybe it only takes a couple days and a handful of people, maybe it can be shipped and delivered by next week. And maybe the additional cognitive load for a user isn’t high — it’s just an extra icon here, after all, or an extra slot in a menu there. But once your new feature is out there, it’s out there. A real thing used by real people."
