Niche social networks could very well be the way of the future. People want to be around others that are like-minded and share their experiences with them. Forums of any subject or hobby have long existed since the dawn of the internet.
Some are diluted like what pervades the medical arena, yet others like the sneaker-head community thrive in hubs evident in NikeTalk. The latter of which touches on the realistic promise attainable through cultivating discussion and tools that caters to them.
PandoDaily recently made a solid case for niche social networks. A primary reason is mobile. The convenience and accessibility aspects certainly forms the foundation towards smartphone penetration. They mentioned Strava as a company in the sports space that has triumphed as a byproduct of it.
Although Strava entered a crowded running and cycling marketplace that includes Nike+ and Suunto, respectively, their personalized apps and social ecosystem have managed to amass millions of users within each niche–not to mention a willingness from them to pay a premium for these experiences.
This example provides a model in which other start-ups can create their own niche communities that garner high engagement levels. Accordingly, Fancred, the sports world’s app answer to Klout, launches a web platform and a revamped mobile to iOS 7 standards as part of Fancred 2 today. These enhancements have presented themselves due to their latest investment round of $1.5 million, which was led by Atlas Venture, Militello Capital, Star Power Partners, and angels such as Acquia Founder, Jay Batson, and Brightcove alumnus, Bob Mason.
“We fundamentally believe that sports have the power of building deep and passionate communities centered around teams,” says Fancred’s Chief Executive Officer, Hossein Kash Razzaghi.
“With 83 percent of fans using social media while watching sports, we’re building an online community where fans can discover, connect, and share their thoughts and experiences with other fans around the world. Fancred’s main goal of the web platform and app redesign is to provide a beautiful and simple user experience that connects more fans to share their love and passion for sports,” Razzaghi continues.
The new UI developments are at the crux behind Fancred 2. It’s imperative for them to ensure a great user experience to any and all new users, particularly during their respective first few sessions. Razzaghi told SportTechie that they want their members to virtually, intuitively acclimate themselves to the platform the moment they begin using it.
This experience should hopefully compel users enough to contribute and post their own content, not merely access Fancred to consume sports content. And over the long-term, they’re working on surfacing the best content and have members engage with one another, be it as simply as voting on posts or comments.
This emphasis to hone in on new users’ experience is critical towards Fancred’s ability to scale. Early adopters and power users have surely spread their affinity and preferences with their friends to join by now, but new members must be able to navigate through it easily and be captivated to engulf themselves like others.
One of Twitter’s main issues is a sustained comfortability level with new users, as TechCrunch recently explained. And now they’re experimenting with a new direct message experience as a feature to their new app. It behooves Fancred to constantly make this facet a high priority, which these latest advancements intend to do.
Conversely, Fancred’s proactive listening to their community have helped shape these new features. Their feedback has prompted features that makes it easier to discover other people as well as accessing team feeds. Fancreders can immediately notice the improved navigation and search functionality. These two aspects, in particular, enables anyone to find what they want faster and stands out.
“With the addition of the Fancred.com website, we are essentially extending the ways our members can access Fancred. While our mobile app is extremely important and will continue to be a huge area of focus for us, we realize that the web is not going away anytime soon. It’s important that our members have the flexibility to use Fancred in a variety of ways,” Razzaghi detailed the site’s role.
Almost akin to Turner Sports’ NCAA.com redesign, Fancred had to acknowledge and address their online efforts. While it’s safe to assume that mobile is first, it would be remissive to discount the web as an integral part of any sports property’s digital strategy. Adweek noted there has been a 14 percent spike in the way fans consume sports content via mobile over the last two years; this metric stills has an overall disparity of 28 percent versus the internet.
There’s a greater discrepancy of 52 percent between laptop and mobile devices when it comes to live-stream usage of games. These statistics suggest fans may find it more convenient at times to have multiple tabs open within a browser over their smartphone to engage in sports conversation.
Moreover, the enlistment of the Boston Red Sox and Mississippi State University recently to Fancred should promise to bring a new dimension of content that this sports-focused medium implores. The visual nature of this platform bodes well for teams to share their behind-the-scenes content as an alternative distribution vehicle.
Jonny Gomes’ home run during the World Series serves as prime example of engaging content that will surely grow through these new inducements and as more teams may decide to join.
In terms of downloads conversion and increase engagement results, Razzaghi shared his vision on how this redesign will improve the overall Fancred experience:
“We fundamentally believe that the one true way to experience long-lasting growth and engagement is to provide a great user experience that makes members proactively want to share with their friends and add to their community. ‘Just make a great product’ sounds simple but pulling it off is extremely challenging. With Fancred 2, we focused solely on creating a more beautiful, vibrant, and simple-to-use experience in our app but also extended that same experience to the web.”
As a last incentive, users can win two tickets to the Super Bowl by simply liking their Facebook page and entering their e-mail address to be notified when this content debuts.
Fancred 2 attempts to take two steps forward by taking a step back to the roots of niche social networks.