Football fans who have added Twitter to their weekend routines may want to check out Sportcaster, a new app that provides a look into what Twitter users are saying about each N.F.L. and N.C.A.A. football game in real time.
The app, which is expected to be available for free for iOS and Android devices on Wednesday, shows scoreboards and schedules for professional and college football. When a user clicks into a game, he can follow the conversation taking place on Twitter from influential accounts that pay attention to each team– local sports reporters, avid fans and players themselves. (Of course, anyone who follows sports knows that athletes have way too much common sense to tweet during an actual game, but the conversations in the hours and days beforehand can be entertaining).
Like many social media projects, Sportcaster’s utility is not in creating new information, but in managing the deluge of data available online. Sportcaster does so by using an algorithm that calculates the popularity and focus of every Twitter account, choosing the most relevant for each time. Several employees supplement that by adding other accounts manually. The app follows about 30 to 40 accounts for each N.F.L. team, and slightly less for each college team. The ability to dip into any game and get a sense of what people are talking about at that moment has the potential to be very satisfying.
“It’s what you might be able to do for your hometown team if you made the effort,” said Evan Conway, the president of OneLouder, which makes the app. “It’s not that easy even for one team, but it’s a real pain to do for the team you’re playing this week, and the week after that.”
OneLouder is best known for making Tweetcaster, a popular mobile application for Twitter users. The technology for Tweetcaster serves as the technical basis for the new app.
A test run of Sportcaster during Monday’s Jets-Giants game proved entertaining — or as entertaining as anything related to a lackluster preseason game in a nearly empty stadium can be. There was practically no irrelevant content in the feed — which anyone who uses Twitter knows is a minor miracle in and of itself. There was nearly play-by-play commentary, as well as a healthy dose of sarcastic remarks about how the national anthem was sung, or the relative brick-handedness of various running backs.
There are still some bugs to be worked out, particularly with the app’s box scores and recaps. And several obvious features have not yet been added. The most notable shortcoming is the absence of a mechanism that allows users to add their own friends, so they can see what their buddies from high school are saying about the game. Conway said that the kinks would be ironed out as the season progresses. The company is also building more fantasy football integration.
“The season was coming and we ran out of time,” he said.
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