Timu Aims to Deliver Sports-Oriented Social Media

These days everyone wishes they started the next big social media network, and the expansive online universe, in its enduring esoterica, hardly

fails to offer up new untapped niches for the social media model. That’s why Seattle startup Timu is taking it upon themselves to provide the connective and community-building capabilities of social media to the world of organized amateur sport.

Think about it, playing for sports team in the past (for those of us who found that sort of thing appealing), what communicative powers did we have? Team meetings? Phone calls from the coach? The always satisfying Team Banquet? Timu, led by social media veteran Matt Heaton, has built a platform that will allow amateur athletes, teams, and leagues to coordinate schedules and rosters, post stats and pictures, and generally engage the sports community. Imagine being able to compare your batting average to hundreds of thousands of sporting amateurs in the world, and then, provided your average is sufficient, sending a few cheeky remarks to tomorrow’s opponents. Or watching bowling video posts from last night's local league play to keep an eye on the tournament. Sounds like fun.

Of course, Timu aren’t the only people who have thought of this; there are scores of social media networks in the making out there, even in the sports genre, such as WePlay -- endorsed by LeBron James himself-- Sportsvite, and Vancouver’s own TeamPages. And we can’t forget that that heavyweights like Facebook will be hoping to keep sports groups in it’s enormous, multifaceted fold. But for Matt Heaton there’s is much inadequacy in the existing platforms out there, and he would know a thing or two about social media building, having co-founded the popular Active Rain real estate network.

Timu launches this week.