The Next Web

User generated predictions for Euro 2008

Written on June 9, 2008 – 6:18 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Just before the start of a manic football night, I found an interesting blog post by a blogger from the evil side, Italy. Web professional Marco Corsaro wondered whether an “innovative player” was taking advantage of social media to market his services by using the euphoric state Europe is in. People are so sucked up into the game, that they will just participate in anything - as long as it has to do with football. A stupid example: I just dropped by the supermarket where you get a small lion - the Dutch mascot - for every 15 euros you spend.

When Corsaro browsed Facebook to find such an application, he found over 100 applications and probably chose the most logical way to go - number one on the list. It’s developed by the sports TV network Eurosport and Yahoo. This application allows its contestants to compete by predicting the right tournament results. The best will get.. a 42-inch Plasma TV. Corsaro joined the club and says the following:

So whoever thought about this initiative to drive traffic to the Yahoo!-Eurosport joint portal, is also using it as a “teaser” so users install the applications. And looking at the results achieved so far, I’d say, its not bad at all. My rank (I am the last one since I just joined in) is 38.648 out of 60.651 members…that makes me think that about half the people that have installed the application are also actively playing.

Good post mr. Corsaro, I hope your national team won’t play as nice.

I hope you like that post!

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euro2008, football, italy

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Google and Netvibes offer the one thing a European can’t live without these days

Written on June 9, 2008 – 10:55 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

All the German, Swiss, Austrian, Polish, Croatian, Portuguese readers of The Next Web Blog are probably pretty wound up already, Euro 2008 has begun! Now the Dutch, like me, get excited as well, since we have to face the Italians tonight. So please forgive your blogger to express his state of anxiousness with a blog post about this football highlight of the year (don’t even think of the word soccer, my dear American readers. And yes, it’s like the Superbowl). Several services offer ways to keep you up to date about the championship.

Google has made a real effort for its European customers. Besides from showing a special football Doodle, the search giant also developed a special OneBox. Everybody who uses a localized version of one the participating countries can use some handy shortcuts. Whenever you type in ‘euro 2008′, you’ll get info about the upcoming matches. And there’s ‘euro 2008 country_name‘ for the latest scores of your favorite team. I’ve saved the best for last though, as I haven’t mentioned the Euro 2008 Google map yet.

Four of my friends aren’t tech bloggers, so they actually have spare time. They’ve used it to travel to Switzerland to get pissed while wearing an orange outfit. I’m pretty sure they’ve used the handy map Google and transit authorities SBB and VBZ of Switzerland and OBB of Austria have made. So that even after a few beers, my friends still find the way to their hotel or the stadium. If that isn’t enough, Google Maps also showcases the match results and other statistics.

And then there’s Netvibes. Being an important European start-up, you can’t ignore this wave of football news and craziness. The Paris-based team has written a blog post in which they tell their users how to keep track of all the essential football news. There’s a “tailor made” Euro 2008 widget which functions as a score board and some news sites offer special football feeds.

So now your online life is all adapted to the football event, all you need now are some beers, friends, and a tv-set.

Oh, there’s actually one more thing I have to share with you. Follow the Twitter discussions! They’re really funny, especially since some people really think they know a lot about football. Use Summize to track them down.

euro2008, Europe, football, google, google maps, netvibes

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