The Soccernet website is huge in terms of its audience and football coverage. The site covers many countries professional leagues and also all national clubs. To draw the users of Soccernet together and gain information from them Soccernet developed a message board system. However since its takeover by the American sports giant ESPN it has merged its site with the other sports associated with ESPN and their major websites and so all of these smaller communities have been mixed into the hosting network putting them in an even bigger community one that covers all major sports.
The first feature to look at is the user profile which you need to create in order to look at forums and post on the message boards. The user profile in Soccernet as shown below is actually quite similar to a social networking site, such as Facebook. With the Soccernet user account you can find friends on Soccernet, people can post on your wall, you can join groups, upload photos and do almost everything that you can in Facebook besides applications.
On Soccernet you can post your own blog as well, for other users to look at and comment on. As you can see in the example this one user has created a blog where he writes about things that interest him and does so in a humouring manor. He has managed to obtain some frequent repeat visitors by getting noticed in the groups he is in and through friends he has made in the forums.
This part of Soccernet is a ‘twitter’ style real time conversation about certain hot topics that are current in the news or still up for debate within the ‘community’.
The message boards on Soccernet are linked through the ESPN network as ESPN bought the website Soccernet.com and since changed it to Soccernet.espn.go.com. This means that the Soccernet community before the buy-out were thrown into the mix with all of the other major sports covered by ESPN. The community however has been growing since the creation of the website and now through the ESPN logo Soccernet gets a lot of media coverage and thus attracts an even larger audience. There aren’t many other places to go on the internet that are like Soccernet and so the retention of old users is not difficult as the site has developed so much that it is at the forefront of its industry. This is similar to how Facebook changes its image yet people don’t leave they complain but still adjust to the new and stay on Facebook.
This is the layout of the message boards on Soccernet, they are very simple and do not focus much on instant community interaction as they do not make it apparent who is online at the current time.
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Message Board Rules
We reserve the right to remove any post or user from our message boards. When posts are deleted, it's usually because they violate one or more of our house rules. Repeated violation of these rules may result in the suspension of your posting privileges. The following is a list of the House Rules of ESPN. By using the services provided on ESPN.com you agree not to do any of the following: Post, distribute, or otherwise make available or transmit any data, text, message, or computer file that we deem to be: (a) defamatory, abusive, harassing, insulting, threatening, or that could be deemed to be stalking; (b) bigoted, hateful, or racially offensive; (c) vulgar, obscene, or sexually explicit (language or images); or that (d) encourages or advocates illegal activity or the discussion of illegal activities with the intent to commit them; Post, distribute, or otherwise make available or transmit any data, text, message, computer file, or other material that infringes and/or violates any right of a third party or any domestic or international law, rule, or regulation, including but not limited to: (a) copyright, patent, trademark, or other proprietary rights; (b) right of privacy (specifically, you must not distribute another person's personal information of any kind without their express permission) or publicity; (c) any confidentiality obligation; Advertise or sell any products, services or otherwise (whether or not for profit), or solicit others or use any Forum for commercial purposes of any kind. Post, distribute, or otherwise make available or transmit any software or other computer files that contain a virus or other harmful component; Impersonate any person or entity or misrepresent your identity or affiliation with any person or entity; Engage in antisocial, disruptive, or destructive acts, including "flaming," "spamming," "flooding," "trolling," and "griefing" as those terms are commonly understood and used on the Internet; Delete any legal notices, disclaimers, or proprietary notices such as copyright or trademark symbols, or modify any logos that you do not own or have express permission to modify; Post, distribute, or otherwise make available or transmit material or make statements that do not generally pertain to the designated topic or theme of any Forum. ESPN requires that members must be 13 years old to participate in message boards or community features within ESPN.com. This restriction is based on the birthday that is saved in your member profile. Please check member services if you would like to confirm your account information. |
The message board rules are quite strict in terms of copyright and posting pictures of certain things as ESPN is a major media organisation and copyright infringement is taken very seriously, there is also an option to choose if you don’t mind your picture being used on television as there is a TV talk show called ‘ESPN Soccernet press pass’ usually before and after games that broadcasts images from the internet to talk about on the show.
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