“Fancred is a sports-focused social network for fans to connect and share content and opinions about their favorite teams and sports. It’s a free app where you can post articles, gifs, photos, comments, and trash talk with other fans.” This excerpt, taken from the Fancred Community Leader Playbook, outlines the company’s goals and vision. The site was founded by Hossein Kash Razzaghi, a Mississippi State University graduate. Razzaghi moved north after graduation and discovered he no longer had a fan base to talk about his beloved Bulldog’s sports with. Together with a small team of co-workers, he launched the Fancred iPhone application in August 2012. Since then, the company has expanded to a website version. So the question is: how did they do it? How, in a digital world dominated by social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, did Fancred break through and receive over 551 ratings on iTunes, averaging 5/5 stars? Simple – they gave the people what they wanted: strictly sports. Fancred’s vision is “to be the single point of access to your life as a sports fan.” Their network allows sports fans to communicate, share, and experience sports with other die-hard fans without having to sift through friend’s newborn baby pictures on Facebook and “OMG I <3 Justin Bieber” tweets on Twitter. Here are some features that have made Fancred such a hit: Accountability – Fancred requires users to register through Facebook, thereby authenticating the user’s identity. This makes individuals accountable for the content that they post and the ways in which they interact with other users. Give Incentive – The “Fancred Score” is a genius tool that the site uses to measure how active users are. However, the score is not based on how many times a user posts; it is used to separate the true fans from the bandwagon fans. A complex algorithm that measures things including knowledge of sports, involvement in team communities (i.e. your presence in each and overall fandom, calculates the score. The Fancred Score tool is successful because it gives competitive people something to vie for, but also inevitably increases users’ presence in the site. Go Straight to the Source – College sports are a huge demographic when it comes to online communities. To help engage them, Fancred has Community Leaders at over 75 colleges across the nation, a number that is expanding every school semester. These Community Leaders are responsible for posting live updates of their school’s games, pictures, and engaging their school’s community in sports-related discussions. In turn, the community leaders receive real-world experience and school credits for an internship. Guerilla Marketing – Awareness. The Internet has grown to colossal size, making it harder for potential users to stumble upon sites. Guerilla Marketing tactics such as writing the site’s URL in giant letters across a classroom chalk board, posting cards all over campus, and, my personal favorite: eccentric displays of Fancred affection in the form of their mascots. Give Users a Goal – Unlike many other new sites that smother users with free shirts and logo-clad items, Fancred has made these items a prize. You cannot buy them; they have to be won. Fancred employees and community leaders hold “caption this picture” and “post the best X, Y, Z” competitions and offer Fancred shirts, stickers, and other coveted “cred-swag” as prizes. From its start as a mobile phone application to its expansion to a website format, Fancred is a company to be admired and studied for its clever growth tactics. Edited by Melanie Ford, Webmaster and Editor-in-Chief 2013-2014
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It’s exactly three months into the new year, and there are already several apps that are making their way to the forefront of both the iOS and Android app markets. Here is a quick rundown of some of the apps on each operating system that you can expect to hear more about in 2014. Do any of these apps have what it takes to be this year’s Snapchat? iOSHorizon How many times have you recorded a video with your phone only to realize that you had forgotten to rotate your phone so that it would capture the video in full screen? This problem can easily be solved with Horizon. Horizon is an app that allows you to hold your phone vertically while it records horizontally. This means that all of your videos will appear in full screen no matter which way you hold your phone. Horizon also allows you to add filters and share your videos updates. Traktor DJ Traktor DJ for iOS allows you to take control of the party right from your phone. With Traktor, you can import the songs on your phone into the program and mix them so that they transition seamlessly from one song to the other. Now you can eliminate the awkward silence between songs during a party, and you can show off your DJ skills without having to pay for expensive equipment. SocialRadar This app informs you when your friends are nearby based on information about their location that they share on various social media accounts. You can configure SocialRadar to alert you whenever your friends are within a certain distance from you, and you can also view their location on a map. SocialRadar also allows you to keep up with your friend’s social media. 5by 5by is an app that analyzes your mood and social interests in order to provide an endless stream of online videos that it thinks you will find interesting. 5by gives you the chance to actually sit and enjoy videos in your free time, rather than wasting time searching for a video that interests you. 5by is brought to you by the same people who are in charge of StumbleUpon, which may explain why users have found the app to be so addicting. Cloze Looking for a better way to keep up to date with your closest contacts without having to navigate through various email and social media platforms? If this is the case, then Cloze may just be the app that you have been looking for. Cloze allows you to read emails and social media updates from your closest contacts in a single interface, saving you the hassle of having to deal with “inbox overload.” AndroidAuto Finder There are several apps on the market that attempt to help you remember where you parked your car, but none of them is as efficient as Auto Finder. Auto Finder uses your device’s hardware sensors to detect when and where you parked your car so that you can locate it later on. The app works completely on its own and doesn’t require any type of set up from the owner. With Auto Finder, the days of wandering around the parking lot looking for your car are long gone. AirDroid AirDroid allows you to manage your phone from your computer. All you have to do is connect your phone to web.airdroid.com. From there, you will be redirected to a screen that allows you to do things such as manage contacts, answer text messages, make phone calls, and transfer files all from your computer. With AirDroid, you can access your phone without actually having to touch it. Type Machine Most of you know how frustrating it can be when you are typing something on your phone and it suddenly crashes, causing you to lose all of what you typed before you could send or save it. With Type Machine, you never have to worry about this happening ever again. Once activated, Type Machine stores everything that you have typed from every app. If your phone crashes, or you mistakenly erase something, you can refer back to Type Machine in order to retrieve your work. Type Machine also comes with a number of filtering options and privacy settings to ensure maximum efficiency and security. TimePIN TimePIN is an app that is geared toward increasing the security on your android device. We all have that nosy friend who is somehow able to guess our security pin numbers and gain access to our phones. TimePIN changes your security pin every minute so that only you can gain access to your phone. The standard pin is the current time, however, you can modify this in order to strengthen security. For example, if the time is 12:34, then your password is 1234. However, if you set TimePIN’s setting to reverse PIN mode, then your password is actually 4321. Even if someone figures out that you are using TimePIN, they will probably never be able to figure out your pin due to all of the different options available. Event Flow Calendar With the Event Flow Calendar widget, “I forgot” is no longer a viable excuse. The widget turns your lock screen into a calendar, so whenever you unlock your phone, you will be shown a list of all of the things that you have to do for the day. People are almost always checking their phones, so Event Flow Calendar is the perfect app for someone who may need a little bit of extra help remembering everything that needs to be done during the day – especially us college students! Edited by Melanie Ford, Webmaster and Editor-in-Chief 2013-2014 |
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