Facebook fan pages

Facebook fan pages are a flexible and economical way to promote your brand. The Betfair fan page has just been revamped and I think it looks great. Not that I am biased.

The fan page acts as a hub for Betfair's Facebook presence. Sure, it is a marketing tool and we have a lot of promotions and branding on it. However, it is offers something deeper and more valuable. The fan page allows us to tap into the fan experience of our customer base. Todays response on the page to the sad news about Bobby Robson is a case in point.

For the forseeable future Facebook will continue to grow in importance as a marketing and engagement channel. This stuff is somewhat experimental but by basing your approach on sound social media principles it should gain traction and payoff. Compared to Facebook application development fan pages may provide a better ROI.

Twitter - risks and opportunities

Twitter is undoubtedly the hot platform right now. Recently, I have been playing around with Twitter by creating an automated price alerts feed (BetfairAlerts) from our public API. BetfairAlerts monitors the Betfair market prices and tweets when the price changes by a preconfigured amount.

Because Betfair prices relate to real world and real time observations they are very well suited to being part of the Twitter stream. For example, when a goal is scored the BBC might tweet "Ronaldo scores, Man United 1 - Liverpool 0", then BetfairAlerts tweets "Punters think the chances of Man United winning are increasing: ManU 1.24 to win". These tweets could be linked together via a Twitter meme or rely on search or following to be found by punters. Punters can follow the alerts through the standard Tweet apps (e.g. Tweetdeck) online or on their mobile phones.

BetfairAlerts had some success in gathering a following. Although it is obvious that the vast majority of followers are spam machines. From my experience with Twitter it seems that +90% of accounts and the tweets they produce are absolute garbage. However, you have to remember that Twitter is a 2 step process - publish and subscribe. Providing application developers continue to find interesting ways to filter and leverage the data then the amount of spam is irrelevant. I think Twitter as a platform has a long way to go.

So what are the risks? If you are too agressive at raising the profile of your account you may find that Twitter switch it off. If you visit BetfairAlerts on Twitter right now, you will see the standard Twitter suspended message. How did this happen? Well let's just say that there are no shortcuts to building a following. Beware automated applications that purport to rapidly increase your following. Twitter are wise to these apps and you may find yourself in Twitter jail for at least 30 days. Hopefully, we can get this resolved soon and start our tweeting experiment again.

Also, if you are a cricket fan check out our Ashes ticket competition on Twitter.

Virgin social media revamp

Interesting to see Virgin's new website is based all around social media. Overall, I think this is a good example of well integrated social media features. But, is that really Richard Branson answering your questions in the Ask Richard widget? Sceptical.

It is only a matter of time before a gambling website achieves the same level of social media integration.

Social betting for football punters

Following on from my previous post, Sportech announce a move into Fantasy Football. The game includes many social media features such as instant messaging.

Social betting redux

A blast from the past...


In 2000 a bold new startup attempted to change the gambling world by creating an online betting community where people bet against their friends. The company was Flutter. Betfair was also a peer to peer gambling exchange but had a different proposition. Betfair focused less on the social aspects and more on the market trading dynamics. Betfair quickly established a beach head with serious horse racing punters, who had a pressing need for the new service. After a brief head to head battle, Betfair and Flutter merged. Although based on the concept of a peer to peer exchange, the only truly social feature of the Betfair website today is the forum.

Roll forward to 2009...

There have been an influx of social betting startups into the market in the past 12 months. A good example of this move towards social betting is the new football pools. Football pools has always been something of a social betting game. I remember the days when the pools man used to visit our house to collect the coupon and £1 each week.

As part of the strategy to bring football pools online, the umbrella company Sportech purchased a football fan site called 4thegame back in Nov 2008. Over the past 12 months 4thegame.com has been integrated with the football pools website to offer a more social fan based experience.

As part of their social betting strategy, football pools have added many social media features to their website, including forums, profile pages, league tables and mini leagues.

In the exchange world, Smarkets is a new start-up aiming to offer a social based gambling experience. I admire their ambition. It is a daunting task to create a betting exchange from scratch but that is what they appear to be doing.

Will combining social media and community with betting work? Yes. But social features will only appeal to specific market segments. Betfair dominated because it was well suited to serious horse racing punters. Likewise, the football pools social strategy may be well suited for the average football punter. The general rule is that no size fits all.

Betfair dominated Flutter because serious horse racing punters bet significantly more than the average social bettor. Betting is a low margin, high volume business. Will the investment in social betting pay off if it attracts a large mass market audience who spend more time talking than punting? We will wait and find out.