Published Date: October 13, 2006

I read Mashable almost every day and this “Indianapolis Colts to Launch a Social Network” post and it really caught my attention. What do I think? Genius!! Why the hell is ESPN not doing this for every single sports team on the planet?? They’ve got some of the elements like message boards, but could do a lot more in my opinion. Talk about a killer social network- it would almost be TOO easy to produce vibrant conversation on such a network. Think of how many Die-Hard Steelers, Browns, Yankees (sorry- gotta rub it in again), Red Sox, and Celtics fans (among others) there are around the globe would post profiles and join player/team fan clubs. Since “Humans have an underlying NEED and WANT to communicate with others,” there is the very large potential to draw a huge number of eyeballs ($$) to a site that brings passionate fans together. I think there is an argument to be made that ESPN could easily be the most active and engaging social network in the world for males ages 18 and up- it’s just a matter of executing. They already have the branding down pat and draw loads of traffic to their web site- so if they just figured out how to REALLY engage people, they would tap into the large gold mine sitting right underneath their noses! Come on ESPN- knock one outta the park!

On a somewhat related sports note- is there any site that provides RSS feeds for a specific team’s scores? I’d love to get Sonics scores via my RSS reader this season…