I recently caught up with Ty Ahmad-Taylor, founder and CEO of FanFeedr--a real-time personalized sports feed for your favorite teams and players.
Ty possesses over fifteen years' experience in interactive media and journalism and provides the overall creative vision and strategic leadership for the FanFeedr website and associated services.
Before founding FanFeedr, Ty served as SVP, Strategy and Product Development at Viacom, where he was the product lead and manager for:
- MTV.com, VH1.com, CMT.com, LogoOnline.com
- MTVmusic.com
- MTV Video Facebook application
- MTV Content API (when it was useful.)
Previously, he was Senior Director of Cross-Platform Applications at Comcast, where he provided strategic planning for the broadband portal Comcast.net, built the first Web 2.0 application for cable companies at http://www.tvplanner.net, and was responsible for interactive entertainment applications that leveraged the PC and the cable set-top box.
Earlier in his career, Ty was Creative Director, Excite@Home (nee @Home Networks), where he led the company's creative efforts for broadband, interactive television and client software.
Ty holds a bachelor's degree from Haverford College and a master's degree from Columbia.
Q: Take us back to the "idea" stage of FanFeedr. Were you looking to create something online, or did this idea cross your mind when you saw a void in sports news feeds?A: I was looking to solve a problem that I had myself, and I went out and did market validation studies to understand the pain for sports consumers and inefficiencies in their current behavior.
Q: How does FanFeedr work from the user's perspective? Can fans get their news on-the-go via their mobile devices with your product?
A: Here is how someone can use the site, based on our first-time user experience:
To get started…
1. Log in using your Facebook login (we won’t publish anything to Facebook without asking you first).
2. Search for your favorite teams or players using the search bar at the top of this page.
3. “Become a fan” of those teams using the button on the upper left of each search page.
As you become a fan of teams and players, new content will automatically fill your FanFeed. You can get back to your FanFeed from every page by clicking the FanFeed button just above the search bar."
Q: Discuss some of the interactive aspects that your product offers.
A: Folks can make comments on stories, videos, players, and teams, and they can also post these comments to Facebook, and shortly, to Twitter. Additionally, users can respond to the comments, so that is someone says: "Giants rock," you can and should expect a response from Cowboys' fans. Lastly, users can update their status in a sports-related vein and have that publish to either Facebook, Twitter, or both.
We are adding features that will allow users to publish their Fantasy Sports activities and game results to their Facebook and Twitter feed, and we are also allowing users to predict the outcomes of games so that they can get badges for their achievements. such as top Giants' fan and so on.
Q: I noticed in the site index there's a section called "You" that's coming later. What will that be about?
A: The You section will allow people to upload photos and videos, which is a request that a lot of users who attend games want. As always, you can then post this material to Facebook and Twitter automatically, if you wish, to get feedback from friends and followers.
Q: Which basketball players/coaches, in your opinion, are maximizing the power of social media? How are they standing out?
A: I think that Rashad McCants, who doesn't even have a contract, mind you, is a leading light in the basketball community, as he leads contests, has passionate followers, and is also an avid media consumer, which serves him well in terms of being up on trends. He is also personable and nice, and that mix makes for a compelling read on Twitter.
In a similar vein, Kevin Love of the TWolves does a smart job on Twitter and through other social media, and is always entertaining. I won't mention the heavyweights like Shaq and Steve Nash, as everyone already knows about them.
On the coaching side of things, there St. Johns' folks are doing a smart thing in hiring you (no, I am not trying to butter you up), but I don't know of any coaches who are really 1. providing insight into their strategies 2. entertaining with the written word.
That seems like an opportunity for anyone who can get their act together. Likely candidates would be George Karl, and Eric Spoelstra on the pro front. The former because he is a character, the latter because he is younger than most NBA coaches.
I would love to fake tweet as Bobby Knight and/or Phil Jackson, but the FanFeedr legal defense fund needs to be protected for rainy days. Actually, I would like to start a fake Twitter war between the two, but that is my next startup idea.
