Matt Heaton knows what it takes to build a social networking platform for a targeted audience. After all, he co-founded the popular Active Rain real estate network in 2003 -- a Bellevue network that boasts more than 150,000 real estate professionals as members.
Now, Heaton -- who left his day-to-day duties at Active Rain last summer -- is giving it another whirl in a completely different arena: amateur sports. This week, he's launching Timu, a new service that he says is designed to help baseball, basketball, soccer and other amateur athletes more effectively communicate with their teammates.
Does the world really need another social network -- especially one that is tailored to recreational sports? Heaton -- an amateur athlete himself who came up with the idea after growing frustrated trying to stay connected with his sports teams -- certainly thinks so.
"Sports already has a built in offline social network, primarily focused around teams," said Heaton. "These small offline social networks have not (migrated) onto existing online social networks very well, mainly because the generic social networks provide a disjointed solution."
Timu -- which takes its name from the Swahili word for team -- allows team members to upload photos and videos from games as well as organize rosters and schedules. It even has a stats section so players can see whether they are carrying their weight or not at the ballpark.
Heaton said there's "a tremendous motivation among competitive athletes -- no matter what skill level -- to show off and share things like statistics, game results and photos."
Beyond the specific team pages, individuals can check a general message board built around specific sports.
Just as recreational sports can get heated, there's plenty of competition in the quest to build a top-notch Web site for recreational sports.
There are big players like Facebook and Google, which allow people to create groups around specific interests. And there are startups such as WePlay -- endorsed by Cleveland Cavs star LeBron James -- and Sportsvite.
I also wrote about a similar concept in February called GroupieGuide, a Seattle startup which was created by University of Washington grad Jordan Isip.
And then there's the big Kahuna in the category: The Active Network.
Heaton doesn't seem too distracted by the competition, including the Active.com communities which he said provide almost no interaction.
"There hundreds of people out there providing team Web site solutions, yet by and large they are fairly static offerings, which don't provide the interaction expected on the web today," he said. "There were also several entrants into the sports social networking space but tended to be targeting mostly at individuals and (do) not handle teams or leagues well."
Heaton, who has self-funded the startup to date, said he originally thought about creating Timu as a Facebook application. But then he decided it was smarter to build the service as "social network agnostic" -- meaning that the service could easily plug-in to Facebook as well as other social networks.
At this point, Heaton is the only full time employee on the project. He's just started to consider a seed round of funding.
And the entrepreneur is drawing on his experience at Active Rain to try to build Timu.
"There were many take aways on how to build a network using a ground roots, viral marketing approach that I think will apply just as well to sports teams as it did in real estate," he said.
Given the experience at Active Rain, Heaton also said he's spent a lot more time thinking about revenue models and how the company will reach profitability.
A team page on the Timu sports network.
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