As mentioned in the earlier post, I’m focusing on a broad range of teams. I went looking for information on the Australian Hockey League teams and first class cricket teams. One problem that came up involved the Tasmanian Tigers. Why? That is a team name for a team in the AHL and for Australian first class cricket. It isn’t particularly problematic on LiveJournal clones, where no one lists the Tassie Tigers as an interest. It does get problematic on blogger, where two people list the Tasmanian Tigers as an interest. Looking at both profiles, the assumption can probably safely be made that the Americans are interested in the animal, not the hockey or cricket teams. It isn’t particularly problematic on bebo, where the only person listing Tasmanian Tigers as an interest has a cricket icon. LiveJournal has 23 people listing Tasmanian Tigers as an interest and I have yet to go through each profile to try to guess which one they meant. Meep.
This is another example of a problem team that makes trying to figure out the fan community size problematic.
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I should really focus pretty much exclusively on the NRL, the AFL, the NBL and the VFL with a minor diversion into first class cricket and the ANZ Championship. At one point, I compiled a list of some 3,500+ sports teams in Australia. Running through the top flight teams for all sports and the minors for the major sports is an exercise in overwhelming. Still, I like to look on the networks I’ve been focused on.
One of the side leagues that I’ve been looking at is Gridiron Australia, the league for American football. I had the list of teams. I check everything on LiveJournal, its clones, blogger and then bebo. At bebo, I realized I had a problem. For the Victorian Eagles, no problem. (There is one fan. He is male, 21 years old and from Victoria.) There is one person for the Queensland Sundevils. For the SA Fire? There were 40. Turns out that there is an artist named SA-fire. It also sometime short for the San Antonio Fire Department. Given that, the short form isn’t a search form that will be used. (Though one or two of the people who list SA Fire as an interest are clearly South Australia Fire team.) The long form search is the one that goes for bebo. With that search, there are only two people who list them as an interest.
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