Here’s a load of arse. Niche football social media site OleOle, based in Beverly Hills, has bought an Arsenal FC fan blog called ArseBlog for an undisclosed, but likely small, amount. The six-year-old blog, which won a Bloggie award last year for its Gunners news and features, has been integrated in to OleOle, together with its weekly podcasts (which it calls “arsecasts“) and reader comments (called merely “arses”).
The parallels with Sportingo‘s 2007 acquisition of the small CaughtOffside soccer blog are clear – OleOle has essentially bought the unnamed Irish “Arseblogger” behind the site so he can write instead write on the social site, where fans can submit their own content and chat about the game. But OleOle has integrated its acquisition more deeply than did Sportingo.
Started in 2006 by secondary ticketing veteran Doug Knittle, OleOle’s material on clubs, players, stadia etc is authored by members – each of whom can add each other as friends and become fans of clubs – using too many social functions to list – news, blogs, votes, photos etc. Knittle is aiming to bring more football blogs on board. Sites that can convert fan passion in to voluntary content creation stand a chance of attracting reciprocal readership. Sportingo, too, is UGC-centric, but covers a range of sports.