If you’re not a stranger, come on in and let’s talk about what’s going on at Soccerlens.
The Forum
First up, I’m sure almost all of you have seen / read / heard about the Soccerlens forum. When I put it live on the 1st of July, I was very nervous – I didn’t know how it would go over, whether people would actually read it or bother spending time on it.
My heartfelt thanks to each and every single person who took out the time to write a post or sign up to the forum – 11 days on, I’d say that it’s not a bad start and while it means a LOT more work on my part, the forum will increase to gain attention. It *should* get a lot more contributions when the season starts and people start discussing matches – overall, thank you for your support and if you haven’t already, drop in and say hello.
Ed’s Blog
I read Ed’s Newcastle blog several times a day and to be honest, the blog is a smashing success. We’re getting emails every other day telling us how much they enjoy the blog – and while I could be cynical and attribute it to Newcastle fans being delusional the reality is that Ed’s really come into his own element over at nufcblog.com and he is, without doubt, running the best newcastle united blog on the planet.
In 2-3 months, the site gets around 50-100 comments a day, has plenty of regular commenters and readers and most of all, it has Ed and his unique voice.
Major props to you mate.
Pissed-off Fans
I hate it, absolutely hate it, when someone drops by your blog and tells you off – they have no idea of context, are bringing their own personal bias into the picture, are judging you for things they’ve read elsewhere, and worse, they make assumptions based on their own bias, not on what’s written.
However, when you’re blogging this is part of the job. Journalists can (and do) hide behind the broadsheets / tabloids and can avoid reader backlash because there’s no easy way to retaliate. Bloggers, with the conversational nature of blogs, don’t have that option.
Having said that, it’s predictable and quite expected. It doesn’t make it right but at least it’s a fascinating social experiment on manipulating people. I’ve turned West Ham fans into enemies and then friends and then enemies back again with just 3 separate articles. You have to love the fickleness and base reactions of human nature.
Fantasy Football
EPL Talk, the ‘other’ united blog, Caught Offside and probably a few others (Pies and The Offside come to mind, although I don’t expect 101greatgoals.com to be far behind either) have already announced or are probably going to announce that they’re starting a football fantasy league.
Props to them, that thing will be ‘the rage’ next season, which makes me wonder if it’s worth it to do in the first place.
The two big candidates for the fantasy football setup are the PremierLeague.com’s fantasy football offering and the new kid on the blog, SquadGod (see their blog). SG have been in touch with all the major football blogs and are pushing to get them onboard – they’re launching next week I think so it’ll be interesting to see what they can offer to the bloggers.
By the way, yes, Soccerlens will be doing a fantasy league as well. The idea is to a) pick the right partner (I’m still talking to SquadGod) and b) to take things a notch above what everyone else is doing.
More on this by the end of July.
Changes on Soccerlens
As always, I’d like your feedback on how Soccerlens is going and what you’d like to see more on the site. So far this summer we’ve helped launch a couple of club blogs (several, in fact – arsenal, man utd, barca and newcastle fans are all welcome), launched a forum and set up a pretty extensive section on football kits.
And if you’ve noticed, I’ve also changed the focus of Soccerlens – or at least tried to.
And if you guys missed em, you absolutely must hit these pages:
The 2007/2008 Prem Kits page
The Summer 2007 Prem Transfers page
So please let me know how you think we can further improve SL. Mind you, the target is to beat the pants off all the other blogs pretending to give a damn about football 🙂
Finally, the quote of the day:
“Without penetration, it’s just masturbation, and right now, we’re playing with ourselves.” – DC United coach Ray Hudson, discussing his team’s inability to score goals.
Hat tip to Ed from the Newcastle blog for this one.
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