OCricket, the Django based cricket social network, seems to have shut down or in their own words, ‘gone into hibernation’. Their first blog post was in August 2008 and they managed to consistently launch new features for cricket fanatics.
Meanwhile, it seems that they’re upto something else as per a recent tweet:
If they dont intend to pursue OCricket further, it would be great to hear about their experiences on their launch, operations, stats etc. and the reason behind the shutdown.
OCricket, the recently launched cricket focused social networking site, has been on the offensive when it comes to launching new features. First and foremost, they’ve launched free cricket score updates via SMS. OCricket users from the US and India can update their profile and add their mobile number and they’ll receive free score updates via SMS (about every 10 minutes). I hope that they dont get burnt out by the high costs associated with sending out SMS’s (‘memba what’s happening to Vakow ?)
Another cool feature they launched is a ‘seeker’ bot. Its a jabber based bot that will give you cricket scores on demand. Simply add ‘seeker@ocricket.com’ as a buddy to your GTalk or any other Jabber client and you’re good to go.
They have also launched ‘Cricket Talk’, a Twitter stream of user suggested keywords related to cricket. Depending on how ‘hot’ the suggested keyword is (based on votes from other users), they start tracking it and relay it for other users to enjoy.
Its great to see how fast the OCricket team is innovating and releasing new features. IPL is their best bet to attract a huge number of users and build up a momentum that’ll sustain them for the near future.
Though the generic social network scene in India is dominated by Orkut and Facebook, the niche based social networking market in India is still up for grabs.
Ocricket is such a niche based social network for cricket fans. You can post cricket related articles, share media (photo-videos) related to cricket make friends and create cricket focused groups. You can also view active Twits related to cricket. They pretty have all the hooks to build a good community for cricket fans.
