Daniel Roberts
MLB.com is gearing up for next season
November 14, 2011: 3:34 PM ETCEO Bob Bowman, the man behind baseball's digital properties, made bold bets that have paid off big time. Now, the challenge is to keep growing without alienating fans.
By Daniel Roberts, reporter
FORTUNE -- Here's a surprise: Major League Baseball provides back-end streaming services for conservative talker Glenn Beck. In addition to his web channel, GBTV, it also powers almost all of ESPN3's online video. And the Webby Awards. And March Madness On Demand.
Headquartered in New York City's Chelsea Market, MLB.com has established a reputation as a technology powerhouse. Its successful stable of websites, apps and streaming video products is arguably the most advanced of any major league sport. And much like Amazon's (AMZN) Web Services division, which quietly provides cloud computing to other businesses, MLB.com has turned its powerful consumer brand into a healthy technology business.
How did that happen? In part, MLB.com has used new products to make the most of the collision of sports and social media. This year's World Series resulted in an average of 352,000 social media comments per game, according to social analytics startup Bluefin Labs. That includes public tweets, Facebook posts and blog comments. For Game 6 alone, there were 901,000 such comments -- crushing the NHL Finals and approaching the Academy Awards, which yielded 965,000 comments. (MLB.com does not disclose its financial performance; its ownership is shared equally among the league's 30 teams.)
A mega-popular app hasn't hurt either. The "At Bat" app was the highest-grossing last year in Apple's (AAPL) iTunes store. Across the iOS, Android and BlackBerry platforms it was downloaded 1.6 million times. The idea behind the app, says MLB.com CEO Bob Bowman, has been to provide everything a fan could possibly want relating to the game. And it does, or certainly gets close. Users can read editorial content from MLB.com sportswriters, listen to radio play-by-play or watch an instant replay within a few seconds.
Multimedia senior vice president Joe Inzerillo says the league is also seeing increased adoption of MLB.tv's "season pass," which allows people to watch entire games online and costs $120 per year. MLB.com's website, meanwhile, is being accessed more from mobile devices, such as phones and tablets, than from desktop PCs and laptops. (This chart shows traffic to MLB.com -- notice the spike in wireless access.) "The way it's looking for four years from now," posits Inzerillo, "is you have one connected device, just one thing, in your living room, and that's how you watch all of your online video content. Then you also still have a PC in the corner that you blow the dust off of when you want to write a letter."
MLB.com has been adding features to the At Bat app at a breakneck clip. One example: users can now "check into" a game, once they're physically near the stadium, and receive offers that might range from a seat upgrade to a 10% discount at the shop. They can also see aggregated tweets from others that are at the game. At three ballparks, the app even lets users order food and skip the line when they go to pick it up.
The question now is, how can MLB.com build on its success without making its products bloated or confusing? Communications vice president Matthew Gould says, "We push this technology to fans and let them use it as they wish, or not. We think it will enhance the experience, but we don't make it an intrusive thing."
Still, the company has to decide how to market and merchandise new features. "The question is always what will we do with the app marketing-wise," Bowman says. Right now, at $14.99, it's what he calls a "one-size-fits-all" package. He wants to add some premium options to the app, but seems to be at a loss, wondering, "How do you build on a soft good? Honestly, who do you even look for to tell you how to do that?" Answering those questions will be crucial to continued growth. The standard practice would be to create a handful of new features and offer them at an extra fee on top of the basic app, but Bowman is hesitant to do that.
One change that Bowman says is likely to come soon: a monthly subscription. "We probably won't charge in the off-season at all," he says, because "we don't want to annoy our customers." Currently, the app price goes down to 99 cents in the off-season, and returns to the full-season price when spring training starts. With a monthly subscription system, fans would have to re-up each month, but would have the luxury of skipping it for a while if their team is already out of the running, for example.
Ultimately, it is that steady stream of new ideas and new features that has most helped distinguish MLB.com. Whichever changes the company decides to make, it will be tinkering with a winning formula. Then again, any misstep might mean having that much more to lose.
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With The Verge, SB Nation looks beyond just gadgets
A flock of former AOL staffers are about to launch a new gadget blog, The Verge. Their publishing model could end up looking a lot like their former employer's.
By Daniel Roberts, reporter
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Oct 26, 2011 1:54 PM ET -
An audience with the King of the Patent Trolls
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Sep 15, 2011 11:36 AM ET -
Why the mobile patent wars got so hot
Intellectual property law sounds like fodder for think tanks and PhD candidates — so why is Silicon Valley suddenly tearing itself apart over a seemingly sleepy subject?
By Daniel Roberts, reporter
FORTUNE -- If you feel like you've been seeing more news about patents than ever before, you have. In July, a consortium that included Apple, RIM and Microsoft made a move on Nortel's patent portfolio, outflanking Google. In August, Google hit MORE
Sep 13, 2011 2:57 PM ET -
GameStop CEO talks iOS devices
The videogame retailer has started accepting trade-ins of used Apple products -- and that may mean a bigger change for their business.
By Daniel Roberts, reporter
FORTUNE -- The news that GameStop stores are buying used Apple devices alongside traditional consoles and video games hit the Web this week and went viral almost immediately. Many bloggers began stating outright that the chain will also sell new Apple devices, such as the iPod MORE
Sep 9, 2011 3:34 PM ET -
A new life for Taser, this time with less controversy
The maker of the handy defense weapon is putting a focus on its new video-surveillance system for police officers.
By Daniel Roberts, reporter
FORTUNE -- "Don't tase me, bro!" The phrase is familiar to pretty much anyone that was alive and consuming news in 2007: Andrew Meyer, a senior at the University of Florida at the time, shouted it before campus police shot him with a Taser ECD (electronic control device). A MORE
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Book publishers in denial on Amazon's e-book sales
At the annual BookExpo America this week, booksellers voiced mixed feelings about the news that Amazon's Kindle book sales have surpassed print, and some said they simply don't believe it at all.
By Daniel Roberts, reporter
FORTUNE -- New York's Javits Center was a crowded, noisy hothouse of handshaking and book signing this week at BookExpo America. Every publisher and imprint was there with marketing reps, editors, and authors on hand. The MORE
May 27, 2011 11:32 AM ET -
An outsourcing firm rocks social media
By Daniel Roberts, reporter
Customers love Cognizant's C2 platform so much that they want to buy it. Too bad it isn't for sale.
FORTUNE -- Cognizant Technology Solutions, a tech outsourcing and consulting firm that serves huge companies, has built a corporate version of Facebook that pulls together a bunch of Web 2.0 tools such as Twitter feeds, employee-written blogs, and chat. It's the kind of collaboration tool many businesses say they'd love MORE
May 13, 2011 5:00 AM ET -
GroupMe turns to advertising, sort of
The group messaging startup will offer slickly branded groups promoting bands, TV shows, and concerts. In other words: sponsors. Will users love or loathe the idea?
By Daniel Roberts, reporter
At the SXSW Interactive conference in Austin this month, while speaking about the recent heavy influx of platforms that offer group text messaging, Ted Livingston, CEO of KIK, told CNNmoney, "The four big [companies] that all the blogs talk about is us, MORE
Mar 28, 2011 9:00 AM ETPosted in: Bon Jovi, Daniel Roberts, Fast Society, GroupMe, Jared Hecht, MC Hammer, Steve Martocci, SXSW Interactive, The End (Lost) -
Can I get out of my T-mobile contract?
Now that it's set to become part of AT&T, many T-Mobile customers are wondering, "Will they let me get out of my contract?" It's the question T-Mobile doesn't want to answer yet.
By Daniel Roberts, reporter
It seems anyone with a cell phone contract has had the thought, whether due to owning an antiquated phone, moving to an area with no service, or dealing with an umpteenth dropped call: "When is my MORE
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