TalkingApes

Advertising Age – MediaWorks – ESPN Wants to Be MySpace for Fans

NEW YORK AdAge.com — ESPN is hoping to become the MySpace of the sports world. In September, it will unveil as part of ESPNs Sports Nation property the tools for fans to create profiles, contribute to sports blogs, post opinions and link to favorite articles.

This is something that will be HUGE. Sports forums are huge, and game chats are big as well, but to facilitate games, etc like this article suggests, there will be no other destination but ESPN.com during gameday.

ESPN also unveiled its digital plans for “Monday Night Football,” coined “Monday Night Surround.” ESPN.com’s editor in chief, John Papanek, said the network would cover the game “the way ABC covered the Super Bowl — with fleets of trucks and armies of crews.” “Monday Night Surround” will feature scouting reports, news and games within a game, where fans from the opposing teams register and battle each other for fan supremacy through trivia, IQ contests, debates and betting contest created and hosted by Page Two columnist Bill Simmons.

Myspace.com is great for people 13-25. Imagine having something like that with the look of ESPN… because let’s face it, MySpace.com visually is garbage. ESPN.com is one of the more progressive sites on the net and is very visually appealing. Once they add-in blogging and chats with other fans of the same team as you, it’ll be the one-stop destination for every fan. FoxSports, CBS and SportingNews aren’t even close. Sure, FS and SN both have blogs, but they aren’t very customizeable. I’m looking forward to seeing it and the cool new technology they bring to the table.

technorati tags: ESPN, myspace.com, fans, profile, chat, community, social-networking