First off…great blog! Your passion for the game as well as youth sports is inspiring. Love it. Secondly, thanks for noticing weplay’s beta.

weplay is all about increasing participation in youth sports and helping everyone involved enjoy their activities. After all, the inspiration for our start up was as parents and coaches ourselves.

I actually think our missions are very much aligned. Your posts (like “Top Ten Things…”) are perfect examples of the type of content that makes a social media site and a group management utility a natural fit. Giving coaches the chance to learn from each other and help parents understand everyone’s role (and vice versa) is key to successful teams/leagues.

Our site is evolving daily. We built it from scratch and are rapidly iterating. Last week we upgraded the scheduler; this week media upload will take a giant leap forward…so stay tuned.

Lastly, love TC and all, but they got the image licensing all wrong. weplay is a COPPA compliant site founded on safety and privacy. Our TOS has always stated that we only have rights to post the material on our site. The member retains ownership.

Thanks again and congrats with OTP!

T.J.

T.J. Marchetti
VP of Product
weplay.com

I disagree that sporty kids aren’t on the Web. About 80% of the young athletes in the nation are on a social network. Unless we’re going to start pulling the plug on their computers, we had better find a place for them to communicate that we can live with! (That eliminates MS and FB!)

Try out http://www.Zoosse.com/ (prototype). Right now it’s a social network satisfying the social and scheduling needs of athletes, schools, youth centers and teams, but when the Beta launches in June, they will add complete informational portals for each of the participating sports; to help people learn about their sports, train better, win more, and get connected and recruited. Already, with no advertising, and only open for a few weeks, they have Olympians, pros and ranked athletes on board. Dynamic.

Most interesting: They are partners with a company that is promising them a million young athletes a year for the next five years, and are committed to making Zoosse as safe as humanly possible.

This is the best athlete social net out there, and if their Sport Portals are as solid as expected, they may have the right combo of social/functional services for athletes…and the audience!! That will make this THE athlete space on the Web. Watch http://www.zoosse.com/

Here is something really needed: http://www.sportsDrive.com. They provide online assessments on sports psychology. Very helpful to find out more about how you´re triggered. Unfortunately, they only have producst that focus on professionals and adults so far.

Eric

They already have a WePlay.com called MySpace and Facebook. Before WePlay.com launched, they should have taken a long hard look at what makes MySpace and Facebook tick. And, segmenting social networks into specific interests is the antithesis of a social network.

We help manage soccer tournaments and in some respects, we could be called a social network for soccer. But, we’re not and are not delusional about the amount of time and attention players, coaches and family give to the tournament. We are almost relentless about our “90:00 minute attention span” rule. Focus on them when they are playing, do not expect they will care before or after.

Sports and sporting events need to focus their time and energy into Widgets (Facebook apps) that kids and parents can bring into their Facebook, MySpace pages for the team, tournament, league and integrate THAT into their pages. Integrating interests is how kids see themselves. Parents and marketers need to quit seeing kids as “the soccer player”, “the actor”, “the singer”, “the bandie”, etc.

Which is why stuff like WePlay.com will fail, technology deficiencies aside.

PS: Also a parent of travel soccer kids, now 22 and 17.