Think about the last time you attended a game or watched one at a bar with a supporters’ club. You may not have known anyone when you arrived, but that didn’t keep you from chatting and high-fiving up a storm with anyone within arm’s reach. Starting new conversations was easy because you knew that everyone else there could talk passionately about the same thing you wanted to talk about: your team playing in that game.
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Vixlet aims to extend that seat-next-to-you connection to your digital experiences, creating the world’s first passion-based social networks. While Facebook and Twitter connected you to your friends and brands, and then to their friends and brands, Vixlet moves “beyond the 6 degrees of separation into the next phase of connecting people,” says Nick Loui, Vixlet’s chief marketing officer. “The next generation of social media will be about connecting you around passion. Sports are perfect because you have people loving the team, the sport and the league. It’s truly global.”
Vixlet has partnered with Major League Baseball, the ATP Tour and Liverpool FC to build social network apps for their fans. “At its core, the product that we have reflects a market need,” Loui says, noting the decline in organic reach and monthly average users impacting Facebook and Twitter, respectively. “People are asking what’s next, and companies are trying to figure out how to reach these consumers.”
Excited to announce the new LFCXtra! https://t.co/BfcQkIZnAS
— Vixlet (@vixlet) February 17, 2016
Loui praises Vixlet’s partners for pushing the envelope of social media to improve the fan experience. “We’re fortunate that the partners we have are all forward-thinking. It’s a bit of a risk and a leap to create your own social network. Our partners are willing to put in the time, commitment and dedication to do that.”
How It Works: Capsules of Content
Vixlet’s platform is structured around capsules. Capsules organize content, guide the conversations and facilitate search and discovery. Athletes and teams have their own official capsules, which include posts from the athletes and teams themselves, in addition to content curated by the capsule creator. Andy Murray’s capsule on MyATP, for example, includes pictures of him in action, an announcement of his daughter’s birth and an interview from TennisTV.com. Other official capsules include stats, schedules and featured items from the property’s web store. Vixlet provides a tab of “Featured” capsules, and users can fully customize their experience by selecting capsules they want to follow into their “Subscribed” page.
Any user can create a capsule. Capsule creators – either the property or a user – have the option to choose who can view the capsule and who can post to it: only the owner, anyone on the app or a selected group of users. “Open” capsules created by the properties become the prime destination for user-generated content. MLB Fans apps has a “My Hero” capsule for fans to share photos and comments about which baseball players inspire them; and “Cards and Collectibles” for photos of fan memorabilia. 
“Open” capsules offer fans an unmoderated venue for the sort of wide-ranging conversations sports fans have been known to have, with all the features expected of a digital media platform. Rather than monitor and sift through conversations to keep them on topic, Vixlet believes that the capsule format and the community of fans will keep things on track. “When you immerse yourself in an experience, you’re automatically surrounded by tennis fans and people who like and think about tennis. We wouldn’t force fans to just talk about tennis, but to share the whole broad passion for tennis,” Loui said. “At the end of the day you’re building this army of fans that really truly care about the sport or league or team that will naturally police itself and help build the community.”
Vixlet Apps Enable Content Sharing across Platforms
Recognizing that fans have multiple passion points across sports and want to be able to share their experiences across social media, Vixlet apps are built as distinct sub-networks within the overall social space. New users create a single login that can be used across all Vixlet apps. Within each app, users create a unique profile – including an app-specific username – that contains their capsules, posts and connections. This way, you can be FenwayFanatic on MLB Fans and TopKopFan on LFC Xtra, while only needing one account to be you. 
Vixlet apps enable users to share any piece of Vixlet content with 1 click to Facebook, Twitter or any other supported social media network. This is as much about the user experience as Vixlet’s content-based business strategy. “All the existing networks desire more content, so we become a central point for this great content and develop content-generation relationships,” Loui says. “Every video that the ATP produces lives directly on MyATP. Liverpool is planning a fan Q&A via their Vixlet app. This makes each network a premium source for sharing out amazing content.”
“No matter what social channels a brand chooses, they’re all beneficial. Brands have more control over the brand via an owned platform, but there are advantages to audience sizes with the major social networks.”
Building the Future of Social Media Networks
Eventually Vixlet’s apps will offer partners new ways to monetize content and brand relationships. Unique native advertising, sponsored content and in-app purchases will be among the first revenue streams that Vixlet will facilitate. Vixlet is holding off on pushing revenue generation features until the apps achieve the necessary scale in users and digital inventory to support it.
Vixlet describes its partner pipeline as an “airport runway,” with a series of partners lined up to launch their app one-by-one over the coming months. While the time to develop and launch an app continues to shorten as the company accumulates best practices and feedback from its existing partners, Vixlet does not plan on offering a fully-automated off-the-shelf solution.
“Our relationship with our customers is very much a partnership and collaboration. We provide support both on marketing and adoption as well as the technical side.” By working closely with their partners, Vixlet is able to continuously innovate and test new features, pushing updates every few weeks.” Some of our best features came from requests from partners. We’re learning a lot about the best ways to leverage these platforms, which enables us to build in greater support down the road.”