Shannon Terry, co-founder of Rivals.com, a network of hundreds of college Web sites, gave Jockipedia an “A-plus” for originality with an immediate “wow factor.” But he wondered if it would sustain fan loyalty and interest if it was not more than a virtual search engine with a Wikipedia spin.
“My belief is that experts rule media, so if you build a social networking into a business without experts, it’s a shot in the dark,” he said. “At Rivals, we had some incredible communities, but we built them around experts in their fields.”
GUIDANCE
Jockipedia offers a form of expertise, or at least some editorial guidance, on a companion site, TheJockosphere.
On it, the best and wittiest blog posts — from athletes as diverse as the skateboarder Tony Hawk and the lacrosse player Kyle Harrison, the “William Burroughs of the Jockosphere” — are distilled and discussed by staff writers.
But Warshaw said he had no plans to make Jockipedia into a site for fans, as opposed to one that served fans’ desires to stay in touch with athletes. So the sort of commentary normally found on common social media sites is prohibited.
“I want this to be about information directly from the athletes,” Warshaw said.
The only fan input he wants would be reviews of the athletes’ sites, like book reviews on amazon.com.
“If it turns into a bunch of discussions about the athletes’ on-field performance, it will come down,” he said. “People can already do that on 1,006 sports sites.”
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