A Good Walk Spoiled Just Got Social and in Your Facebook

April 24, 2009

The Sports Illustrated Golf Group announced the launch of SI GOLFNation, a state-of-the-art application designed to become the ultimate social hub and game management tool for golfers. The new application is a first-of-its-kind technological integration between GOLF.com (the most popular website in golf), Facebook and coming soon the iPhone.

Do golfers want to be interrupted? Do golfer really want to share their scores, especially if they are poor?

“Golfers are inherently social, competitive and passionate about improving their games, while also having a good time on the course and in the clubhouse,” said Ken Fuchs, SI Digital vice president. “SI GOLFNation really is about richly enhancing that experience for both the serious player and the casual weekend player.”

SI GOLFNation is free for all users and was created in partnership with Buddy Media using the recently released Facebook Connect technology. The following are key components of SI GOLFNation:

Recreational handicap and statistic tracker: Enter hole-by-hole scores and stats, at your computer or on your iPhone. All your statistics are stored and sorted for easy analysis and comparison, and all course information is provided and verified by the National Golf Foundation.
19th Hole Social Network: Keep up with your golf buddies, organize your next game, send status updates from the course, upload photos and videos. Organize your golf buddies for this weekend’s foursome, your work outing or your next golf vacation.
My Game: Track your stats in real time, just like the pros. From putting and greens in regulation to fairways hit and average scores, SI GOLFNation provides cross-platform access to real data about your game.
Hundreds of imbedded instructional videos from GOLF MAGAZINE’s Top 100 Teachers will be accessible to help improve your game.
My Leaderboard: See how you stack up against those in your golf groups and other SI GOLFNation members. Challenge friends and compete in each category.
Course Finder: Find and review courses, plan your next vacation, and book tee times.
Award Winning Golf coverage from the SI Golf Group will circulate throughout SI GOLFNation including: news, scores, equipment, instruction and travel.

How Golf Will Make Money

SI GOLFNation offers unique opportunities for advertiser integration on each of the different platforms. Grey Goose is the official launch sponsor of SI GOLFNation and will have an enhanced media presence on featured tabs including, My Game, 19th hole, and My Leaderboard as well as on the iPhone. Golfers can celebrate their golfing successes by posting a round with a featured Grey Goose cocktail, find and share great 19th hole drink recipes, and schedule post-round happy hours.

Now For Their Commercial

“We are thrilled to have Grey Goose as our exclusive launch sponsor and you will see the brand integrated throughout SI GOLFNation in some very unique ways,” said Fuchs. “In fact, I am going to use SI GOLFNation to invite my buddies to celebrate the launch with a Grey Goose Bloody Mary.

My Two Cents

Football and many other televised games have always promoted drinking in both sexy and humours ways. The deadbeat sofa fan with a gut seems to always end up with the Swedish girl in a bikini. Now with your cell phone and social network commercials and money making schemes are successful. But outdoors?

Having a website doesn’t make money. To make a profitable website you need three things clients, a paying service and actions from clients connecting to paying service. The front page of SI GOLFNation is poorly designed. The main content is the advertisements which include two flash revolving ads (which are excatly alike, but one is a banner and the other monopolizes the right column).

I am huge fan of static or stationary ads. The revolving ad keeps your browser way too busy and takes away the main purpose of the site (at least to the client) is to view, edit and track data. The website colors are too white and remind me I should read “The Great Gatsby” again (Note: “The Great Gatsby” character Jordan Baker cheat in the golf tournament).

Golf Nation Site

Do I like the website? Nope. I see redundant use of the web just for another $ 0.0001 per click on advertisement. There are better way of tracking your golf and handicap, this connecting you to one more entity is building momentum for a more intrusive golf experience. When I am up with a long put I do not want my cell phone “vibrate”…

“Greetings Golfer! I see you are at the 9th hole, are you thirsty for a Grey Goose Liquid Electroshock to get you through the back half of the course? Press 1 to ignore, 2 to order from club house, 3 remind you in 5 minutes. Good luck and make that putt!”

FYI – I would have made the putt without the interruption.

Better / Cheaper Alternatives

Using your clubhouse database, they will keep track for you.
Teeshot (Iphone)
Course data can be entered in any of four ways: thereâ’s a live search feature to find and download courses from the web, you can enter hole information as you play, you can use the very good built-in course editor (and then upload your finished course to the web), or you can use the free CourseBuilder your computer to enter data for a number of courses at once, which you then upload to the web and download to TeeShot on your phone. CourseBuilder is really easy to use, and makes creating entries for all your local courses about as simple as possible. Because users everywhere are creating and uploading courses, the population of available courses is large and growing daily.
Not just for the iPhone : There are apps for your Blackberry (free), GolfAntix ($20) works on just about any phone, and many more at Handango (many are free).

Bottom Line – Skip it! Find the right application for your needs whether is be cell phone based, social networked based (19th Hole), computer based or a combination of all three.

Golf Resources Worth Checking Out