Here's the big press release announcing our deal with the Minnesota Twins, including a video of our Scoreboard Photo Sharing test last fall at the University of Minnesota football team's home loss to North Dakota State.
(Note that I went with Vimeo not YouTube for my video player. I needed the best picture possible to demonstrate the clarity of the mobile photos on the jumbotron and Vimeo was the, um, clear choice.)
FanChatter Stadium Scoreboard Photo Sharing Test from FanChatter on Vimeo.
Minnesota Twins partner with FanChatter to offer Scoreboard Photo Sharing
FanChatter’s Stadium technology will enable fans at the Metrodome to send photos from their phone for display on the scoreboard video screens during Twins games.
Minneapolis, MN — March 24, 2008 — The Minnesota Twins have partnered with mobile sports chat utility FanChatter.com to provide Scoreboard Photo Sharing at all 81 Twins home games in 2008, beginning with the season opener at the Metrodome on Monday, March 31.
FanChatter, which allows users to post and receive sports chat via text and photo messaging, recently launched their new FanChatter Stadium division to offer teams and event sponsors a full range of in-arena mobile interactivity features. The Twins are FanChatter’s first official team partner.
“We’re excited to give Twins fans the chance to take their own pictures and see them on the big screen,” said FanChatter co-founder Marty Wetherall. “FanChatter takes the old roving Fan Cam and puts it the fans’ hands, and you won’t believe the clarity of the photos. They look as good on the scoreboard as they do your phone.”
At each home game, fans will be invited to take mobile photos and send them to a custom email address at FanChatter, where they will be reviewed and selected by Twins personnel for inclusion in one of two fan photo slideshows to be shown during designated inning breaks.
Every fan that sends a photo receives an instant reply message on their phone thanking them for their submission and inviting them to visit an online gallery to see and share their photos after the game. The reply message and gallery are presented by the feature’s sponsor, Qwest Communications.
FanChatter successfully tested their Scoreboard Photo Sharing technology during three University of Minnesota football games at the Metrodome last fall. Now the Stadium concept has been expanded to include text message voting, trivia contests, and other mobile interactions, all of which provide teams and sponsors with a “triple-play” of brand communication platforms – in-arena (video board and public address), mobile, and online.
"FanChatter gives fans new ways to interact with games and events,” said Wetherall. "The technology on your phone has moved well beyond simple voice transmission, and it’s easy to use. Scoreboard photo sharing is just the beginning of what’s possible.”
Wetherall continued, “It’s also really cool to have our favorite team as our client.”
Fueled by their deal with the Twins, FanChatter plans to market their services to other teams and sponsors throughout the country while continuing to innovate in the area of mobile sports fan connectivity. They are currently enhancing their Stadium offering to enable more in-game interactions between fans, teams, and sponsors.
About FanChatter:
A Minnesota company, FanChatter is the joint creation of Fanacious, Inc. of Minneapolis and Slantwise Design of Hopkins.
Wetherall, 34, is founder and creative director of Fanacious, Inc., a sports social networking company, and is also senior producer at top creative advertising agency Fallon. His credits include the EDS Super Bowl campaign (“Cat Herders”, “Airplane”, and “Running With The Squirrels”) and independent marketing work for the Minnesota Twins, Minnesota Timberwolves and Minnesota Vikings. In 2003, he created THE SHOW TO BE NAMED LATER..., a "Sports Fan Reality Show" that aired first on community access television and later on Twin Cities NBC-affiliate KARE 11 in 2005. He is a graduate of the USC School of Cinematic Arts.
Slantwise Design is a web design and software development studio founded in 2003 by Jonathan Dahl and Todd Emmel. The company creates usable designs and robust web applications using rapid, agile development methods. Clients range from startups to the enterprise. Most recently, Slantwise has been focused on mobile/web integration and video transcoding systems as well as Facebook and iPhone applications. Slantwise built FanChatter and FanChatter Stadium using the Ruby on Rails framework.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Monday, March 17, 2008
This blog I thaw today
It's been 159 days since my last post. That's 5 months and 7 days. Embarrassing.
So what did it take for me to post again? An Irish holiday? Longer days? The spring thaw? March Madness?
I like the thaw idea, especially since I can finally see patches of my lawn again, but there are really two main reasons why I'm writing again today...
MOVE OVER FAN CAM
Reason #1: Today FanChatter officially made money, so now every year when I wear green on St. Patrick's Day it will commemorate cash and not shamrocks. Thank you Minnesota Twins!
Yes, the Twins, my favorite team with the best logo in baseball (above), has partnered with FanChatter to offer our Big Screen Mobile Photo Sharing feature at all 81 of their home games this season at the Metrodome.
REWIND to last fall, when I needed a way to promote FanChatter.com and our new mobile photo sharing feature. I figured one of the best ways to reach sports fans was through the Jumbotron at the games and I bet that photos from your phone would look as good up there on the big screen as they did on our site.
My friend at the University of Minnesota sports office thought it was a cool idea, so he let me try it out at some Gopher football games. Fans sent in their photos, we put them on the big screen -- "powered by FanChatter.com", of course -- and I was right. The photos looked awesome. In an instant, the roving video Fan Cam was old school, and the new school was us. The fans had taken the cameras into their own hands. Me Media had hit the stadium circuit and there was no looking back.
The best part was how creative the photos were. The other best part was how quickly we realized the sponsorship potential of my little marketing idea.
FAST FORWARD back to today, where FanChatter Stadium offers an entire suite of in-arena mobile interactivity features led by Big Screen Photo Sharing. Every fan that sends a photo receives a reply message that can be branded with anything from product messaging to coupons to access codes for special offers and the list goes on. If you're a sports-minded advertiser and you're looking for a way to get into mobile marketing, this is it.
So I was busy even though I wasn't writing. Then tonight something else happened to help me break out of my slump...
THANK YOU MATT DICKMAN
Reason #2: Matt Dickman is the Director of Digital Marketing at Fleishman-Hillard in Cleveland and the blogger behind Techno//Marketer. He's also the guy who spoke tonight at the Future of Advertising gathering in downtown Minneapolis, which I attended.
Matt gave a solid presentation on trends in advertising and he showed me a lot of things I hadn't seen, like Hurricane Kohls. He focused on MicroMedia and told of how Twitter was buzzing about the Minneapolis bridge disaster last summer a full hour before any news sites had published a report. Absolutely amazing.
(Speaking of MicroMedia, I told him about FanChatter in hopes that he'll give me an honest review of the site and advice on where we can improve -- and I welcome the same from all of you out there, too.)
But it was his discussion of blogging that reminded me of who I need to be. How can I hope to build a successful web startup without the support of the blogosphere? And how can the blogosphere respect a guy who lets his blog hibernate all winter?!
He also talked about the strong relationships he's built through blogging and Twittering, and after I got home I helped him prove his point.
Watching by beloved Timberwolves finish off the sorry Clippers, I chattered via SMS in the Twolves group at FanChatter about reaching win number "SWEET 16". A short while later I received a mobile chatter alert on my phone. It was JJDacotah, a Wolves fan from North Dakota who I've never met in person, chattering back:
"sweet! didn't realize they played tonight. Off topic, my wife game birth to our second girl yesterday! Another baby wolf fan!"
I was amazed at how happy that made me feel to learn about this other fan's good news. The kind of news that makes you forget about basketball for a little while (and not mind it at all). I chattered back from my phone congratulating him, one Fan/Dad to another.
So I'm back. There will be lots more to tell about the Twins and Big Screen Photo Sharing with the Season Opener just two weeks away (exactly). And I look forward to reading Matt's blog as I commit myself to writing more in mine.
Thank you for reading. I promise the writing will improve as soon as I'm fully thawed.
So what did it take for me to post again? An Irish holiday? Longer days? The spring thaw? March Madness?
I like the thaw idea, especially since I can finally see patches of my lawn again, but there are really two main reasons why I'm writing again today...
MOVE OVER FAN CAM
Reason #1: Today FanChatter officially made money, so now every year when I wear green on St. Patrick's Day it will commemorate cash and not shamrocks. Thank you Minnesota Twins!
Yes, the Twins, my favorite team with the best logo in baseball (above), has partnered with FanChatter to offer our Big Screen Mobile Photo Sharing feature at all 81 of their home games this season at the Metrodome.
REWIND to last fall, when I needed a way to promote FanChatter.com and our new mobile photo sharing feature. I figured one of the best ways to reach sports fans was through the Jumbotron at the games and I bet that photos from your phone would look as good up there on the big screen as they did on our site.
My friend at the University of Minnesota sports office thought it was a cool idea, so he let me try it out at some Gopher football games. Fans sent in their photos, we put them on the big screen -- "powered by FanChatter.com", of course -- and I was right. The photos looked awesome. In an instant, the roving video Fan Cam was old school, and the new school was us. The fans had taken the cameras into their own hands. Me Media had hit the stadium circuit and there was no looking back.
The best part was how creative the photos were. The other best part was how quickly we realized the sponsorship potential of my little marketing idea.
FAST FORWARD back to today, where FanChatter Stadium offers an entire suite of in-arena mobile interactivity features led by Big Screen Photo Sharing. Every fan that sends a photo receives a reply message that can be branded with anything from product messaging to coupons to access codes for special offers and the list goes on. If you're a sports-minded advertiser and you're looking for a way to get into mobile marketing, this is it.
So I was busy even though I wasn't writing. Then tonight something else happened to help me break out of my slump...
THANK YOU MATT DICKMAN
Reason #2: Matt Dickman is the Director of Digital Marketing at Fleishman-Hillard in Cleveland and the blogger behind Techno//Marketer. He's also the guy who spoke tonight at the Future of Advertising gathering in downtown Minneapolis, which I attended.
Matt gave a solid presentation on trends in advertising and he showed me a lot of things I hadn't seen, like Hurricane Kohls. He focused on MicroMedia and told of how Twitter was buzzing about the Minneapolis bridge disaster last summer a full hour before any news sites had published a report. Absolutely amazing.
(Speaking of MicroMedia, I told him about FanChatter in hopes that he'll give me an honest review of the site and advice on where we can improve -- and I welcome the same from all of you out there, too.)
But it was his discussion of blogging that reminded me of who I need to be. How can I hope to build a successful web startup without the support of the blogosphere? And how can the blogosphere respect a guy who lets his blog hibernate all winter?!
He also talked about the strong relationships he's built through blogging and Twittering, and after I got home I helped him prove his point.
Watching by beloved Timberwolves finish off the sorry Clippers, I chattered via SMS in the Twolves group at FanChatter about reaching win number "SWEET 16". A short while later I received a mobile chatter alert on my phone. It was JJDacotah, a Wolves fan from North Dakota who I've never met in person, chattering back:
"sweet! didn't realize they played tonight. Off topic, my wife game birth to our second girl yesterday! Another baby wolf fan!"
I was amazed at how happy that made me feel to learn about this other fan's good news. The kind of news that makes you forget about basketball for a little while (and not mind it at all). I chattered back from my phone congratulating him, one Fan/Dad to another.
So I'm back. There will be lots more to tell about the Twins and Big Screen Photo Sharing with the Season Opener just two weeks away (exactly). And I look forward to reading Matt's blog as I commit myself to writing more in mine.
Thank you for reading. I promise the writing will improve as soon as I'm fully thawed.
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