Digital Media Cafe Blog Week Ten – David Granger
February 6, 2014
Join David Granger in the Digital Media Cafe every Wednesday. David will take users through the week’s good, great and unusual use of social media. This blog is here for you to follow up on the topics David discusses in the show.
The new F1 cars…sexy?
Last week the covers came off the new F1 cars. 2014 has seen some radical changes in the rules in the sport with new engines and regulations seeing perhaps the widest in design variations for two decades. Much of the aesthetic attention was placed firmly on the nose, with some interesting front ends revealed at testing in Spain last week. Perhaps the most intriguing observation was on the new Toro Rosso nose. On Twitter, the chain of adult shops Ann Summers wondered if the Italian team’s designers had been taking inspiration from their own range of products.
Testing was also a chance for teams to fire up their digital channels for the first time with Williams first look at their contender via Twitter and Red Bull took the chance to not only show the world the car they hope will bring them more championship success, but also launched their new global social media channel SnapChat. The channel sends images and then deletes them seconds after they’re opened. Blink and you miss it. So perhaps F1 was an appropriate place to unveil the site.
Last weekend saw the opening matches of the Six Nations rugby on Saturday, we thought we’d take a look around the RFU website and see what they’re doing digitally and socially.
Like most governing bodies there is content split between national team, lower level development and fans.
The very active Twitter feed gets a balance between original and re-tweeted content and uses elements such as Throwback Thursdays to dig deep into the sport’s archives – there’s a great image of the touch flag from France’s first home match in the Five Nations Championship back in 1910 was last week’s post.
In between games, the weekly podcast has interviews and features with both current and former stars and impressively does so for 52 weeks of the year.
The official app is also a comprehensive piece of kit, which has everything from live match commentary, links to buy tickets online to a supporters’ Fan Zone to help find the important things around Twickenham such as their seat and the bar.
The next release of the app is set to include all the fixtures and results for the sport as a whole, meaning every game from Market Harborough to Scarborough will be covered.
Athlete Getting It Right
Neymar Junior is an athlete with a massive profile. Whether it’s Pele calling him a more rounded player than Messi or Joey Barton describing the Barcelona striker as the Justin Beiber of football, people have an opinion on the Brazilian. He’s also a bit of a social media sensation, whenever he plays the public get on to the channels and chatboards to either claim he’s either, well… better than Messi or just the Justin Beiber of football. And interestingly he found mainstream infamy through his skills captured and posted on YouTube. The video channel not only gave Neymar Junior the chance to be seen across the globe, but also to become a well-known star even before he had really graced the global stage. His latest online exploits involve taking on 15-year-old AC Milan prodigy Hachim Mastur in a football skills head-to-head on the pitch and then on FIFA 14 on a PlayStation. Not something either Pele or Joey Barton ever had to contend with.
News story
The digital consumption of content is, as ever, on the up and up. Last week Eurosport announced its mobile and online content had reached more than 7.1 million people on January 19, while on January 26 its mobile service had provided 2.6 million viewers with sports news. The most popular stories were from the realms of football, cycling, tennis and motorsports, while ahead of the World Cup this summer Eurosport want to have eight million getting their news and opinion from their online and mobile sites. And it’s only going to get bigger.
Don’t forget if there’s a team, athlete or association you think is doing great things online, let us know in the comment section below.
