About Time – A Social Network to channel all the cricket craziness that has surrounded India has finally been launched. We did a post on IPL Fan Communities, and we also did a post on the Websites with the highest traffic – while doing the fan communities post especially, we strongly felt the need for another media portal which allows fans to connect.
TheIPLFanClub.com has probably launched a little too late. What happens to this club once the season (which is fast approaching its end) closes? Well obviously the club can revive activity for the next season but I suspect that there will be periods of quiet followed by periods of activity on this club. The tendency might be to then make this Fan Club filled with activity even beyond the season. As long as its activity related to the IPL – its fine. The moment it goes beyond the IPL and into discussions about International Cricket, then the flavour is gone.
Im pretty sure that this is the official IPL social network because it has the Official Tournament Sponsors Listed in the footer. Having said that I did not see the BCCI logo anywhere, which makes me sceptical. It is also not clear if Live Current Media, the company that bagged the IPL Portal Rights for $50 Million is the creator and host of this website. It seems unlikely. In a previous post we had written that LCM owns the domain name Cricket.com and it plans to develop it as a portal around the IPL.
Incidentally iplfanclub.com is owned by Indiatimes. There is another social network: ipl-fan-club.com, which definitely looks like a fake. The BCCI and its Legal Sharks will probably crack down on such networks later (or maybe not – they are quite sluggish online).
TheIPLFanClub.com has been floating a contest to spread the word. It rewards users with runs for getting more members on board. The highest run getter has a chance to win 2 VIP tickets to the finals. Standard social networking features exist on this network. There are team based communities, profiles, groups et al.
the site does not hold any future, orkut communities of the ipl teams will do much better than this site.