SB Nation launches regional hubs
by Sky Kalkman on Jun 9, 2010 8:36 AM EDT
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On Monday, SB Nation launched six regional hubs, which aggregate top content from the many blogs that cover teams in that area. Those regions are: Chicago, Boston, DC, Detroit, Arizona and New York.
Yes, ESPN has regional hubs, too. And yes, ESPN gives you like a four-minute localized SportsCenter each day. But I think these SB Nation hubs have a few advantages of their own.
One, there will be twenty of them launched by July 1st, the previous six plus Houston, Dallas - Ft. Worth, Kansas City, St. Louis, Minnesota, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Tampa Bay, Atlanta, Denver, Los Angeles, Seattle, and the Bay Area.
[Note to Mr. CEO man, Jim Bankoff: where is SBN-Western New York? Here in Rochester we're the top minor league sports town in the country, and Buffalo has 1.5 major league teams. Tampa Bay isn't even a city, and the Tampa-St. Pete sports teams have fewer fans than my local championship indoor lacrosse team -- Go Knighthawks!]
Two, with content provided by 250 blogs, there is never a shortage of quality content.
Three, each hub has a mini-blog within the hub, with original takes on current events and yellow journalistic videos. There will be original features, to
Four, SBN tends to have quality communities with quality discussion, while ESPN has, well, "omfg ur an idit, Neyer, go back behnd teh pay wall."
Five, StoryStreams. Newspapers had news cycles, but the internet can consistently add to the stream of content addressing a popular topic. Related blog posts and links to non-SBN sources are organized in StoryStreams, making it easy to follow the progression from "Strasburg's the new Gooden" to "let's temper our expectations" to "holy crap he's got a lot of strikeouts" to "Strasburg's way better than Gooden." Try this one with 41 entries on the MLB Draft.
Six, the more popular SBNation grows, the better chance that I and the rest of the BtB crew can get filthy rich. I am in favor of growing filthy rich.
/SBN pimpage
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However we can help
Our new SBNation overlords.
A little bit more seriously, I’m a huge fan of SBnation. They do a great job of keeping spam down and having an awesome commenting system, and the content from all the team specific blogs is wonderful.
I love the site templates they provide as well – They’re very pretty and also utilitarian.
SBN tends to have quality communities with quality discussion, while ESPN has, well, “omfg ur an idit, Neyer, go back behnd teh pay wall.”
Rock.
On Twitter: @baseballtwit
Some smart internet friends have expressed worry that regional hubs will hurt individual blogs.
Any thoughts on that?
I think it depends
If it’s just a redistribution of current traffic, then I agree with your smart friends. I could also see something like this boost overall traffic to SBN, with some of these readers going to individual blogs to “get more info”. Perhaps a greater percentage would check out the hubs than individual blogs, but it could be a net positive.
I know for me, I go to the individual blogs for “my teams”. I think having the hubs would help me keep up with out of market stuff, at a higher level.
But I don’t know. I don’t really look at what the individual blogs as “news breakers”. I see them more as analysts, commentators, and humorists. It seems like we move one way, while the “other sites” are moving the opposite.
My site is small and won’t be in a hub, so it won’t affect me that much. I fully realize that if I want to take this writing thing to a higher level, I’d have to do other stuff than just write about Iowa State. I don’t think BTB has much to worry about with moves like this.
In short, I guess I don’t know. Maybe I’m not as smart as your internet friends, lol.
by Mark Kieffer on Jun 9, 2010 12:04 PM EDT up reply actions
And don't forget. . .
As far as baseball is concerned, ESPN does have stats, but SB Nation is partnered with FanGraphs.
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