Tired of typical, homogenized, news media reports directed at the superficial fan, thousands of Mets fans have united and created their own news and editorial publishing community to cover their favorite team at NYFS - nyfuturestars.com
[ClickPress, Sat Apr 21 2007] Tired of typical, homogenized, news media reports directed at the superficial fan, thousands of Mets fans have united and created their own news and editorial publishing community to cover their favorite team at NYFS - nyfuturestars.com
"We get daily reports from each minor league affiliate, from fans that provide eyewitness accounts of every pitch, of every game, of every guy, at every level, every day." according to NYFS developer Ed Tsunoda, "It's like having thousands of beat reporters covering every game and scouring every boxscore and news wire. The fans are empowered to tell the story of their favorite team. Themselves. Unfiltered by the media. We have one real rule. Respect everyone, the fans, the players, the team, the community. No typical sports-fan-hating. People seem to really like that."
The idea has caught on and grown into a unique community with user profiles, and connections to local users and tools for finding minor league games near you, and a complete historical archive of the teams history. The web community serves over 20,000 user sessions every day and delivers more than 1.5 million ad views a month, rivaling and surpassing the web traffic of many New York Sports media outlets, including the web site at sny.tv for the Mets own television network (source: alexa.com).
The web site allows users to submit stories and news which is then edited, categorized, and published to the community by staff members. Scores, and news, and editorial features are broadcast via RSS feeds to the world, the community discusses the topics on the message boards, and thousands of fans both create and consume the content from all over the world, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
"It's like a packed ballpark here every day." Tsunoda says as he scans through the databases editing new content, "We have our 'season ticket holders' a couple thousand people who are here every day all day, and we pack the park beyond them every day with the real true fans. I have a whole new appreciation for the staff at the ballparks who make that happen every game."
The site has grown to where it has provided photography and editorial coverage for the Mets minor league affiliates, news feeds to other sites, and they average over 40 new topics a day, and over 850 new user posts to the site a day, every day.
"It's ridiculously comprehensive. It lets everyone be a beat writer. Players themselves, their families, friends, and the fans. We get thousands of different perspectives on every player at every level in the organization. It's just a unique thing." said Tsunoda who believes that fans have more historical context to draw on and that perspective makes them better reporters than traditional media can ever hope to match.
"Where else can you find first hand accounts from people who saw Gil Hodges play, and Tom Seaver, and Darryl Strawberry, and Lastings Milledge and Carlos Gomez? It's not just the volume of participants, it's that they all have a lifetime of experience 'covering the organization'. How could you possibly get that anywhere else?"
NYFS/nyfuturestars.com is ranked as a top 10,000 web site in the world by alexa.com, an Amazon company and serves thousands of Mets fans, all over the world, every day.
NYFS is a community and collaboration by professional writers, photographers, and web designers who are also Mets fans, for Mets fans. It's about the Mets and their minor league affiliates and includes exclusive hi-res photos, articles, news, and message boards.
NYFS keeps a live "score board" of their current traffic ranking compared to other major New York sports network's web sites as reported by alexa.com here:
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