Interactivity and Sports Websites

I wanted to share this article done by Merrimack College about sports websites and interactivity. I also wanted to point out, that even though it is not explicitly mentioned in this article, I believe Fantasy Sports provides a large amount of interactivity on these sites as well. This article is very articulate in explaining how not only the general concept of interactivity works, but how a sports website has many forms of interactivity, be it fantasy sports, forums, discussions, videos, galleries, stats, schedules, stories, and many other things. Many such sites have people login to access their fantasy teams or to post comments, so that aides in measuring traffic to the site, or at least specific portions of it.

http://scholarworks.merrimack.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context=spm_facpub

ASSIGNMENT #2

1. I agree most with Sarnoff's Law stating that the value of a network increases linearly with the number of people on it. This method is mostly used in instances concerning traditional media such as television or radio. The reason I agree with it the most is that it is the easiest to measure and document in the sense that there is nowhere near as much grey area than if it were a newer media source. What I mean by that, is that with radio or television, when people are agreeing to submit their listening/viewing habits for ratings purposes, there is no doubt that the particular channel is being accessed or being used. It is one person using one device at one time. For "non-traditional" media however, you could have a single person viewing a single website on 3 different devices at one time. There is no way for the system to register that it is just one person using the site, instead it could be considered "3 hits". So in conclusion, I believe that this law is becoming outdated and flawed as our technology improves and progresses, but for traditional media, I believe that this method was extremely accurate.

2. In five years, I believe the internet will still be the primary source of information, but I think that it will have grown in accessibility and the sheer amount of content. In five years, we should not only be able to access the internet on computers, televisions, phones, tablets, etc. like we do now, but the speed at which we have access should be progressed exponentially. Perhaps the biggest change to expect in the coming years will be a transition from television to computer. What I mean by that is that with the increasing demand for "on-demand" programming, many people are deviating away from traditional television in order to watch their preferred programs online at their convenience. The media world has responded and signs point to all programming being internet based sooner or later. This means that while we will still have TVs and use TV screens, the actual content will be coming in on the internet, rather than by cable or satellite.