This comes after a recent announcement for Facebook Connect and Nokia’s Facebook App.  Nokia know that a usable, mobile solution for social networking is the next killer app and are ensuring that they will be a major player when it happens.  Fife Community is mobile enabled and we can utilise our mobile experience to help you mobilise your existing information and services.

Cricket is a team sport played with a bat and a ball which dates back to the 16^th century.  The rules/laws of the game were standardised  by the MCC (Marylebone Cricket Club in London, England) in 1809 and little has changed from there.

England play Australia at test cricket which the series is named the ashes after a satirical obituary published in The Sporting Times back in 1882 after Australia beat England at home for the very first time.  The celebrated rivalry has continued every since.

The technology used in cricket to umpire the game can be described as quite basic when in comparison to lawn tennis (another 19^th century British sport).  Video footage can be used by an off field umpire to determine run outs, catches and boundary decisions when requested by an on field umpire.  However the cricketing community as a whole embraces and advances technology.  Cricket commentators have the use of Snickometer, Hot Spot and Hawke-Eye which have all been developed for the use in cricket.

Even with these technological advances I still did not expect the cricket community to jump head first in to twitter.  Never before have I seen this community shows its true global appeal.  Followers from the North pole to the Everest base camp were keeping up to date with the goings on in the game through twitter and most probably the BBCs TMS (Test Match Special) ball by ball radio coverage.

Journalist, commentators and correspondents old and new were tweeting the news, scores and generally anything about the cricket world during the ashes test matches. These include Henry Blofeld (@blowersh) — the old? –,  Alison Mitchell (@bbctms) — the new? –, and new celebrity interviewer Jonathan Agnew (@aggerscricket).  Sky’s David ‘Bumble’ Lloyd (@bumblecricket) being the cricketing tweeting king with over 40 thousands followers.  These numbers are dwarfed by those of Lily Allen (@lilyroseallen 1.2 million followers) who without the power of twitter would not have been the Saturday lunch time TMS’s view from the boundary guest.

Prior to this I could not see the size of the cricketing community.  From a relatively simple (in idea) social networking tool (Twitter) we can see that the cricket community spans age ranges from the very young, to the very old and over the largest of geographic areas.  These community driven metrics are an invaluable resource that can only show the strength and value of social networking and online communities.

http://ma.tt/2009/08/kill-your-community/

The first point “don’t moderate” is a key pitfall that we warn about when helping customers set up communities.  Software is only part of the solution to your online community.  You’ll also need to make a commitment in time and effort to your user base.