Redesigned Fannation.com launches

Sports Illustrated recently launched a redesigned version of Fannation.com, their new ” social networking and sports aggregation platform”. I spent a few minutes, signed up as a member and tried out some of their updated Web 2.0 functionality.

 Cool Stuff

-         The site really embraces the concept of “Openness”. Sports Illustrated obviously creates their own content, but aggregates content from different news sources throughout the site. Once you register you can select which team and/or players you want to track and the site goes out and pulls together relevant news stories from all over the web.

-          NewsScout Map – This feature on the homepage highlightes news stores from across the country on a US Map. You can click on a particular city and see news from that area without having to leave the page. The map also highlightes “Hot News” and has a special icon for news that is related to teams or players you are tracking.

-          User Contribution – The site allows users to easily rate and comment on any news stories and allows users to create their own blogs. If you want to start a discussion on your blog about a particular story they provide a link under the article to pull it directly into your personal blog. 

Other interesting features from their press release

 -          Hot Topics: The biggest news and names of the day are displayed in a unique graphical presentation through which the links to the most viewed stories & personalities grow and the lesser-viewed stories shrink.

 -          Truth & Rumors: Leveraging the popularity of SI.com’s daily collection of news and gossip, FanNation.com enables its users to personalize this information based on favorite teams, players and sports, as well as comment on those items and share it with individuals or groups.

 -          The Throwdown: Two fans within the FanNation community square-off to debate a hot topic from the world of sports. Each person gets three chances to make his or her case and other FanNation users vote on who win that particular Throwdown debate.