Sports lovers might want to check out a company called FanFeedr. It delivers all the news you can imagine about nearly every sports team around. FanFeedr.com is a?source of sports news and information for professional and college sports teams, offering more than 400 distinct, team-specific sites and social media accounts dedicated to providing the most timely and relevant news, photos, video, and sports data about the NFL, Premier League, MLB, NBA, NHL, NCAA Football and Basketball, and MLS. ??
It is all the brainchild of?New York businessman Ty Ahmad-Taylor. “I wanted to do something?entrepreneurial?and I took a counter-cyclical view of the economy. That is to say, the end of 2008 was an extremely challenging time, economically, and thus the costs of starting a business were lower,” he explains. FanFeedr gets its content from more than?10,000 global websites, newspapers, blogs, official team sites, and Twitter accounts. ??
Founded in 2008, the company is funded by private investors. “We connect people with all of the very best?news and information about their favorite sports teams, so that they don’t have to go hunting and pecking at various web sites,” says Ahmad-Taylor. And Ahmad-Taylor says the response to the site has been “fantastic to date. We are approaching 1 million customers”.??
Like most new ventures, Ahmad-Taylor faced several hurdles. “(One obstacle was) attracting top talent, especially engineering talent. It?s been hard,” he says. “Obtaining users was challenging at the beginning, but has become easier as we have adjusted our techniques.” Now, Ahmad-Taylor and his team find new followers online. “We reach new users virally, as we have team accounts on Facebook and Twitter that people follow organically,” he explains. ??
Ahmad-Taylor says they are looking to grow FanFeedr even more in 2012. He offers, “We are expanding into other verticals besides sports in 2012, and looking forward to connecting more people with their passions.”
