Nov 01, 2009 by samir

The Internet’s Biggest Rec Sports Bulletin Board (for real!)

Everyone has their lazy moments. Some people like to procrastinate cleaning their house, others don’t feel like looking through Sportsvite to find people to play with. Well Sportsvite has come up with an answer for the latter laziness — Bulletin Boards! Need players for a game or team? Looking for a game or an activity partner? Easy! Just post a bulletin, and it will show up on relevant people’s bulletin matches. Additionally, you can see your bulletin matches on the right side of your clipboard.

Bulletins are a great way to let the community know what you’re looking for. Sportsvite member Sarah from East Hanover, NJ, was able to use bulletins to find a soccer team. Here are some interesting bulletins that I’ve come across in the Sportsvite universe:

Joseph in Boston is looking to curl. Catherine suggests Broomstones in Wayland… Any native Beantowners out there care to join?
http://boston.sportsvite.com/bulletins/players/anyone-up-for-curling

A.J. over in LA would like to find some over 40’s for Gaelic Football, which is a mix of team handball and soccer. This is a great fall sport for anyone who wants to do something different than soccer.
http://la.sportsvite.com/bulletins/teams/footy–gaelic-football-california-club-rules

Or for those in the Chicago area who have the soccer craving, the Chicago Burn needs some more players!
http://chicago.sportsvite.com/bulletins/teams/we-want-to-find-players-for-our-male-soccer-team—chicago-burn

On the more alternative side, Tomasz is looking for more soldiers to join his paintball team, Sacrament of War! Be careful though, their specialty is deathball.
http://denver.sportsvite.com/bulletins/teams/are-you-available-to-join-a-co-ed-paintball-team

Lastly, the semi-pro Charles County Lions football team are looking for dancers for their newly formed Cheerleading Team. Any young women in the DC area who love dancing might want to check this out!
http://dc.sportsvite.com/bulletins/teams/charles-county-lioness-dancecheer-team

Good reasons to create or browse bulletins:

• You need players for your game
• Your team is looking for players
• You’re looking for a game
• You’re looking for an activity partner
• You have a question!

There are always lots of interesting people around the country looking to be active and have fun, so why not give the boards a gander, or better yet, make your own bulletin!

Aug 05, 2009 by brian

The Sportsvite Weekly - Read All About It

Hopefully, you’ve noticed a new Sportsvite email in your inbox each Monday or Tuesday morning.   A few weeks ago we launched the Sportsvite Weekly email newsletter. The goal of the “Weekly” is to deliver a concise snapshot of all that is happening in a member’s local rec sports scene. The Weekly consists of a few different sections;

Personal Alerts and Updates

The Weekly has links to a member’s unread messages, pending requests and upcoming sports event and activites. It also provides a link to quickly update the sports status message.

Compatible Players

Displays new players in your area who share similar sports interests. Includes profile thumbnails and links to the players. Also includes a link to view even more compatible players.

Teams & Groups

Displays teams and groups in your area that are looking for playersBulletinsLocal bulletin messages from the Sportsvite Community

Promotions

We usually include a promotion from Sportsvite, a league partner, or occasional an advertiser or sponsor

So far, so good. We’ve had an encouraging response to the Weekly and the open and click through rates have been great. It super easy to unsubscribe for those old curmudgeons who don’t want to be bothered. We want to make sure this newsletter stays fresh and are always searching for new ways to make it more useful, informative and interesting. Get in touch if you have feedback or suggestions. We’d love to hear from you (and will send you a Sportsvite head band for a good idea — got to keep that precious brain protected).

Here is a screenshot of the newsletter:

Sep 04, 2008 by brian

Setting Up Your Team On Sportsvite in 10 minutes

A few friends recently asked me to help set up their teams on Sportsvite for their fall softball seasons. I figure this would be something that could benefit all team captains on Sportsvite so decided to turn it into a blog post. Hope you find this helpful. Please email us if you have any questions.

1. Visit Teams Page
Click on “Teams” on the main horizontal nav bar or “My Teams” on the sidebar and then select “Create A Team” (orange button)

2. Choose the sport your team will play.

3. Enter all of your team information.
Make sure you think of a good team email address. This will be used to create a listserv of all active members on your team. It will also be applied to the unique url of the sportsvite webpage for your team. Pay special attention to the “team play status” section at the bottom. Mark down if your team is looking for additional players or wants to accept challenges from other teams. This will allow other sportsvite members to know if they should contact you.

4. Invite players to your team
Invite all of the players on your team by adding their email addresses. You can also import their emails from your address book or select members on your player list. Send out one of our eloquently crafted pre-written message or write your own note. Once players have accepted your invitation you can assign them co-captain privileges (create games and invite players to the team) or even assign players to the bench if they don’t end up playing on the team.

Once your team has been created and your teammates have been invited the very next thing to do is create your schedule…

1. Click on the “add game” option under the “SCHEDULE” section of the left nav bar.
Enter the game title (this is often the two teams that are playing), the type of game and the date, time and location. If you have entered the same location from a past game you should be able find it in your “saved locations”.

2. Add the rest of the games to your schedule.
Yup, for now you have to add one at a time. We’re figuring out how to make this easier so you can add your entire schedule in one shot!

Once the schedule is competed add it to your online calendar through iCal, Outlook or RSS.

Finally, last but not least, go check out or uniform section and use the Sportsvite discount to get some cool threads from our partners at CustomInk.

So that’s all there is to it. Throughout the entire season, your teammates will get email messages before every game and can easily respond within seconds. No longer will you have to chase them down all week to avoid the dreaded forefeit! You can messag your entire team with a single email listserve address and have all of those messages accesbile on the chatter board. As the season progresses you’ll have your schedule, standings and game results all in one place. If you get real ambitious you can even add photos and videos and assign them to actual team games.

Hopefully this will take less than 15 minutes and you are now on your way to an organized and stree free season that allows you to be a manager that would make Coach K proud.

Good luck this season!

Dec 25, 2007 by brian

Sportsvite Partners With KGTV 10news.com In San Diego

Sportsvite leverages new digital communication tools to make it easier for people to play sports. When you visit Sportsvite.com there are multiple ways to connect with other players and organize sports activities. But we don’t want to limit these actions to just members of Sportsvite. In fact, we believe that Sportsvite should help empower all athletes wherever that might be.

KGTV and 10news.com is one of the leading resources for local information in San Diego. San Diego happens to be one of the most physically active cities in the country and it also has a very active community of members on Sportsvite. So it is a great fit for Sportsvite to partner with 10news.com to create and power a recreational sports portal to reach their viewers.

The recreational sports portal allows 10news.com users to search for players by sport, organize a game, view profiles of local players and teams and check out upcoming games and events. The goal it to give people a snapshot of what sports activities are available to them in San Diego and hopefully help them enjoy sports.

We’re working with 10news.com to integrate the portal into the website in interesting ways. Right now, the page can be accessed through the sports section which contains a feed of upcoming events.

We’re excited to work with 10news.com and are looking forward to finding more partners in other cities that we can work with to facilitate sports interaction at the local level.