Twitter clone for poker players - FTsweat

Posted Sat, 03/07/2009 - 15:15
0
No votes yet
Your rating: None
Twitter madness is spreading out of the blue bird's flock. The micro-blogging platforms are built every month expecting such hype and of course the financial success as Twitter. But it seems that no one can beat Twitter. Neither employee micro-blogging platform Yammer or Pownce or Jaiku or 10 other Global ones or 200 international ones.

It seems that micro-blogging trends are coming to poker market very slowly and in silence. Still there are no poker related Twitter tools, very little prominent people of the market participate and quite big part of poker tweets are serving for spamming purposes rather than socializing and information exchange.

 
Did you know that now everyone can update their chip counts in the breaks of tournaments by using Twitter-like service? Also the limit of symbols is not 140, but the allowed SMS symbol amount – 255. Probably no one did as the new service FTsweat (pay attention to the name – it rhymes with 'tweet' and FT means "Final Table"). The service is used mainly for chip count updates, but not for personal communication, or marketing directed information share.
ftwseat full size

The service still seems a little empty as there are a few members who really post their chipcounts, however some nice features may turn this service into the mainstream poker update site. The chipcounts may be posted by sending an SMS or by logging in through the mobile version. In iPhone and Android age the mobile version is no longer needed as one can simply work with the public version. Of course, you can subscribe to the RSS feed and email updates, so you won’t need to visit the site. Also there is a Facebook application for those who want to update the chips through Facebook or do the opposite - change their Facebook status with the latest entry.

 
 
Let's compare FTsweat and Twitter looking at their functionality.
 
FTsweat
Twitter
Posting the message 255 characters; cannot be deleted, replied or favorited 140 characters; deleting, replying, favorites possibility
Interactive card symbols none None (as it is universal)
Link shortening service None. If one posts the link it is not even active Built in
Channel/group possibilities Easily created Channels, possibility to follow entire channel instead of selecting member one by one Channels can be set only by using a special software or outside tools
Facebook compatibility Application which allows posting and viewing ones posts available Application which allows posting and viewing ones posts available
Mobile setup Setting the mobile phone number. Updates via SMS and mobile version m.ftsweat.com Setting the mobile phone number. Updates via SMS and mobile version m.twitter.com
Profile options Possibility to add an avatar, location, website and description of 250 characters. No Design update possibility Possibility to add an avatar, location, website and description of 160 characters. Possibility to change the design or upload your own
Synchronization with Twitter No possibilities to synchronize the updates with Twitter and vice versa (would be a very useful tool) -
Badges The badge is provided for webmasters, but in quite a complicated way as programming knowledge is needed User friendly badge service allowing different types of badges, online customization (manual and by the destination)
Public Timeline Public timeline is a default starting page Public timeline is hidden deep an majority of people have never seen it
Additional services No additional services such as picture, video, search etc Lots of various additional services that serve for any social networking needs
 

FTsweat service is just starting therefore lots of handy tools need to be done in order to get the proper attention in the social media. So far there are more disadvantages than advantages (they are quite minimal) so most probably it cannot expect a high popularity. At least for now. In my opinion the small social networks are able to compete with such giants as mySpace, Facebook and Twitter only providing the specialized content for a particular market with the tools that are unique in that field. What can be unique at the poker market? Well, that's a topic for another Poker 2.0 post. P.S. You can find me as 'Maruxz' in FTsweat :)