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Nike and Google launch Joga.com
Posted by
Hemos
on Mon Mar 20, 2006 10:50 AM
from the where's-the-hooligans dept.
from the where's-the-hooligans dept.
hpcanswers writes "Given the increasing popularity of social-networking sites among the young and affluent, Nike has introduced a new site dedicated to the world's most popular sport: soccer. While Nike provides the content (via its army of sponsored athletes, among others), Google provides the technical expertise. Orkut has been very popular in soccer-crazed Brazil, so Google may be able to make a brand extension here. Joga.com is currently invite only, though a form at the bottom of the home page takes requests for invitations." I actually found the launch of a site like this interesting not because of the content, but because of the trend in "private label" sites. It's a Shake'n'Bake Social Network, and you helped make it.
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Mes Ami slashdotter (Score:1, Offtopic)
(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Sunday October 28, @09:07PM)
Oh, and check out the latest FIFA rankings, USA is ranked shockingly high!
Should we invoke the "Do No Evil" clause here? (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://valdot.org/)
Re:Should we invoke the "Do No Evil" clause here? (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.slashdot.com/)
Why is this a bad thing? If I'm going to buy a wicking running shirt, I'd like it to be made by someone who understands perspiration.
Re:Should we invoke the "Do No Evil" clause here? (Score:5, Informative)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Re:Should we invoke the "Do No Evil" clause here? (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.gamesurge.net/)
Please name the sport correctly (Score:5, Funny)
(http://127.0.0.1/)
Re:Please name the sport correctly (Score:5, Insightful)
For fringe group sports that go by the same name, you add the nation or region that practices it. Like AMERICAN football.
(Waiting for the flamebait-modding to roll in)
Re:Please name the sport correctly (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://free-usa.blogspot.com/)
Let's see if I can make this clear: in just about every country that plays this sport, played almost exclusively by kicking the ball with your feet, it's called "foot" ball.
Here we have a sport played almost exclusively with your hands. It's called.. uh... "foot" ball. Brilliant.
In a related story ... (Score:1)
joghurt.com
Google web development (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://seenonslash.com/ | Last Journal: Friday May 11 2007, @04:02PM)
Is this becoming a threat to "traditional" web development companies like the one I work for? Will Google be eating up development work for some of the larger sites?
A first for google (Score:2)
(http://www.janitha.com/)
Then again, maybe they will do the same for football, tennis, videogames and so on and in no time everyone will be included. Special Searches comes in to mind when talking about paticular groups, but thats just search related, not service based.
Football (Score:5, Informative)
Joga = play (Score:2)
(http://free-usa.blogspot.com/)
Google using microsoft technology? (Score:2, Interesting)
strange stuff (Score:1, Interesting)
Looks like a special Orkut server mixed with Google stuff. The nike reference seems casual.
Superb marketing! - NO "gsports.com" (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Wednesday February 02 2005, @11:26PM)
No "gsports.com" for Google Sports instead they use "joga.com". The 'g' in joga stands for Google like Gmail stands for Google Mail!
Oh you marketing overlords I am at your service.....
Obligatory sweatshop reference (Score:2, Flamebait)
New tagline (Score:5, Funny)
(http://robvincent.net/ | Last Journal: Tuesday October 09, @01:55PM)
Does anyone else think (Score:1, Flamebait)
- Andrew
How do you pronounce that? (Score:1)
(http://www.solarvps.com/)
Barefoot soccer (Score:1)
(http://www.cawtech.freeserve.co.uk/ | Last Journal: Saturday March 03 2007, @02:39PM)
This could come horribly unstuck for Nike. You can play soccer barefoot [kidzworld.com]. I assume that it is a slightly more dainty and skillful game: you cannot just lash out at the ball and expect your boots to protect your toes. Nevertheless it is a game so restricting the equippement used doesn't favour on team over another, it just leaves the players with more money to spend on beer afterwards.
There is quite a tradition of playing rugby barefoot [unshod.org]. Perhaps letting the players talk via a website on whether to spend money on expensive equippement could end up transferring revenue from Nike to Coors.
Google getting into bed with Nike.... (Score:5, Funny)
Commericials will be changed forever.
[OPENING SHOT. CAMERA PANS OVER GREYING, SLIGHTLY ROTUND GENTLEMAN CALMLY TYPING AT HIS COMPUTER. HE IS SITTING AT HIS DESK, IN A SUNLIT HOME OFFICE. IT IS EARLY MORNING AND THE EXTERIOR SHOWS WAVES CALMY IMPACTING AGAINST THE SURF]
[VOICEOVER (John Lithgow)] : Meet David Random. Today David will walk a total of twenty-five feet. But just because he'll barely get out of his chair doesn't mean he won't be active. David will correspond with thousands of people, write seven hundred lines of code, recompile his kernel, download five Styx CDs, and write a major post in his blog. All the while, he won't miss a second of the Brazil-Argentina Futbol game. How will he do this? David utilizes the power of Google/Nike.
[THE MAN LEANS BACK IN HIS OFFICE CHAIR, PUTTING HIS HANDS OVER HIS HEAD AND SMILING]
[VOICEOVER] : With Google/Nike, you'll never need to visit more than one website... that would be like needlessly running around... [THE MAN LEANS BACK TOO FAR, FALLING TO THE GROUND IN AN EXPLOSION OF PAPER, COFFEE, AND OFFICE SUPPLIES]
[VOICEOVER] :
[FADE TO BLACK, SHOWING THE GOOGLE/NIKE LOGO AND THE SLOGON : "Google/Nike, we own you."]
[WOMANS VOICE] : David? You ok?
Slashdot.... (Score:1)
News for Jocks. Stuff that doesn't matter.
Where's the nerd stuff? (Score:3, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Monday February 13 2006, @07:11PM)
Is Google still geeky enough for it to "matter" for us, even when their products and services doesn't mean anything at all besides that their servers are rolling?
Joga = Boobs (Score:2)
Shake'n'Bake Social Network (Score:2, Funny)
(http://home.primus.ca/~ronsharp/tororg.html)
Where's McAfee when you need them? (Score:1)
(http://www.fietsersafstappen.nl/)
Most people do know however, i hate football more than television or microsoft. I might escape this time.
Definition (Score:2, Informative)
What an odd name for the website (Score:1)
here's how i imagine this works... (Score:2)
Soccer isnt the most popular sport (Score:1)
Joga and the Orkut phenomenon in Brazil (Score:1)
And just to give you a dimension of the Orkut phenomenon here. It had in February some 22 billion page views. The largest portal had something like 1.5 billion page views in the same period. Orkut here is *really* huge.
The funny thing is, as far as I know, they don't make one dime from Orkut. Anyway, I guess it is far easier to make a deal with Nike in a World Cup year than trying to find a way to make money from this huge web property that is Orkut.
PS: I'm from Brazil. And yes, we'll win the World Cup.
Joga invite (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://jason.roysdon.net/)
"Joga is unique, because it's an organically growing network of trusted friends. It is one of a kind network that focuses solely on a common interest around the game of soccer. Joga will help you connect to people who share the same passion for the game and also access exclusive content around athlete profiles, video clips and photos.
If you know someone who is a Joga member, he or she can invite you to join as well. If you don't know a Joga member, you will still be able to join the network by visiting www.joga.com.
We look forward to having you join us in the Joga community."
Uhm, ok, so I have to find someone who is on Orkut/Joga to even get into the community? But how can I find someone if I can't get into the community to do a search?
Then I recall that Gmail account invites were for sale on eBay, and sure enough, you can get Orkut on eBay [ebay.com]. It's only a matter of time before Joga account invites are available on eBay.
Anyway, if you have a Joga account, I'd love an invite. My first dot last name @ google.com.
another SN by Google? (Score:1)
(http://rootshell.be/~julioody)
If they mean the same "good work" Google did with Orkut, than everybody's in for trouble. Seeing Google as _the_ high quality web development company, one can't conceive they bought and kept a product in such a bad shape as that.
Forgive me if I guess wrong, but I think Orkut has been around for 4 years or so, right? I still get silly error messages all the time (ask an user if he hasn't seen the "Bad, bad server, no donut for you" at least 10 times in his life), either when you try to upload a picture, write a scrap, or do any sort of interaction. It's the same average I used to get when the product was launched, and it didn't belong to Google. Meaning they bought it for some reason that's not making good use of it.
Second, success of Orkut in Brazil had nothing to do with soccer (of course, the text didn't mention that as the reason, but suggests correlation). Orkut was the first social network that became widely known over there. That's all. Word of mouth took care of the rest.
this is funny (Score:1)
What is truly interesting about Joga (Score:2, Insightful)
(http://www.google.com/)
How many of you will go to a site because of a tv advertisement? Probably quite a few, given my audience. Compare that number though to the amount of people who would join a website/visit a website after recieving an invitation from someone you know. Many more.
It works on two levels:
1. We trust our friends/acquaintances more than other forms of advertising, word of mouth advertising, viral advertising, virulent memes all work on us because of this. Google has formalised a way of doing this with the invitation system.
2. When you go to a website you are used to being able to view content and so on for free. This is especially true with community sites, because the content is not being created by the service provider. However, by removing this ease of access an illusion of exclusivity is created, making us want it more. Of course the volume of people is actually as high, if not higher, than it would be if you can sign up for nothing.
This exclusivity/invitiation system is an awesome way of getting a huge user base of people who are probably actually interested in your service (as opposed to randoms off slashdot, for example)
Not soccer... (Score:3, Informative)
(http://concurrentthinking.blogspot.com/)
open source social networking? (Score:2)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Re:Soccer sucks! QWZX (Score:1)
(http://www.fastbug.net/)
Re:Soccer sucks! QWZX (Score:3, Informative)
(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Sunday October 28, @09:07PM)
Defense isn't always a bad thing, the same people that tell you soccer is too defensive will rave about shutout pitching in baseball and redzone defense in American football.
I thought soccer would catch on here once the national team started beating legitimate countries, but they've been very good for years now (currently ranked 5th by FIFA) and still nobody cares.
Re:Soccer sucks! QWZX (Score:2, Interesting)
I agree that a draw in a playoff shouldn't be resolved via penalty kicks, that's awful. I'm for the golden goal, but for some reason it didn't success..
Re:Soccer sucks! QWZX (Score:3, Informative)
(http://www.infinitesorrow.com/)
Soccer IS catching on in the US.
It's the fastest growing sport in the US.
It's also the world's most popular sport.
Why is baseball the favorite sport in the US?
Because we're a bunch of lazy turds who like
to stand around doing nothing. That's baseball.
Tell me that you actually consider a baseball
play an athlete and I'll laugh at you.
Play a real sport: soccer.
Your generalizing that "we" think soccer is a bad
sport, etc.. is just that: generalizing.
Get out of the house and away from the computer and
take your 150 lb. spare tire with you.
Re:Soccer sucks! QWZX (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't let the erratic scoring system fool you, American football is very low scoring, and has touchdowns no more often than soccer has goals. Didn't the latest superbowl have only four touchdowns in four hours? Maybe if a goal in soccer was worth twelve points you'd think it was more interesting?
You neglect the fact that a low scoring game makes the scoring much more interesting, notice how a goal in soccer is a massive event, whereas scoring in basketball is completely irrelevent? A defense-orientated game is much more tactically interesting than where teams score every time they go forwards.
Do you know why Soccer doesn't catch on in the US?
Do you know why baseball doesn't catch on in Nigeria? The answer is just as irrelevent and uninteresting. For the record, more Americans play soccer than gridiron, which is largely just watched on TV. So much for American football being a 'sport', unless in America watching TV counts as a sport.
You know that in America, when talking about a sporting event, people spend more time talking about the adverts, sponsors TV channels, half-time shows, announcers etc than they do the actual game? That just about says it all.
We know that soccer sucks, because we have sports to compare them to.
You know that other countries also have other sports? Some countries even play baseball and basketball, and are actually better at it than Americans. But then in other countries, sport is about sport, it's not just a TV circus.
but almost every child here plays soccer. We know soccer. We just know that it's a bad sport.
They play it even though it's a bad sport? If it was that bad, why aren't all the kids playing gridiron instead? Maybe they've been brought up with the American ethic that gridiron is something to be watched on TV rather than played.
The solution? I've always thought that widening the goals posts would do a lot for the sport.
Yeah, that just about reinforces the stereotype of Americans having low attention spans. The only thing your idea would do is to dumb down the game to make it appeal to Americans, but we don't want people like you watching the game. We want people interested in the sport, not a Hollywood-style Entertainment Spectacle with cheerleaders and half-time shows, where the sport itself is just a sideshow.
Ever been to an NBA game? They have to pipe music over the tannoy throughout the entire game otherwise all the fans fall asleep. Great sport that eh?
Soccer has potential
If being the out and out, undisputed biggest and most popular game in the world is 'potential', then what exactly is the finished product? A few niche sports played almost entirely in North America?
Re:Cool comparison site (Score:1)
(http://www.plainblack.com/)
Re:Curious (Score:2)
(http://pthbb.org/)
As for baseball, well it's supposedly pretty damn big in the Carribean and Latin America.
See Also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_hockey [wikipedia.org], which points out that you have to have ice to play.