What happened?
Social media giant Facebook (FB 1.29%) has announced that it is launching a new platform to keep up with real-time sports called Facebook Sports Stadium. The company says that it has 650 million sports fans, which already makes it the "world's largest stadium." Facebook Sports Stadium will be a place where sports-related content is aggregated, such as for people following a specific game.
Image source: Facebook.
New content will be updated in real time and listed chronologically (more on this later). Relevant content will be things like friend posts and comments as well as expert commentary, sponsored Pages, and game information like scores and statistics. Facebook is positioning the platform as a second-screen experience to engage in while you're watching a game broadcast.
Facebook Sports Stadium will start with American football games, but will soon support other sports from around the world like basketball, soccer, and more. The platform will launch first on iOS, but will come to other platforms soon.
Does it matter?
Facebook Sports Stadium represents the latest in the ongoing competition with Twitter (TWTR +0.00%), where each social media platform copies or borrows popular features from the other one. One of Twitter's few strengths has been its heavy emphasis on real-time information, and users often congregate on Twitter during major events (including sports).
Notably, Twitter has also always been different since it lists information in reverse chronological order, a stark contrast to Facebook's carefully and algorithmically curated News Feed. This has long been an important distinction between Facebook and Twitter, although Twitter has been experimenting with different curated feeds recently as well.
In no uncertain terms, Facebook wants to participate with real-time events with non-curated content, but what remains to be seen is whether or not it can make a dent on one of Twitter's strongholds.
