Social Networking for Cardsharks
In the beginning, Al Gore invented the Internet. He said let there be social networking, and there was MySpace. And it was good. At least until Facebook came along, then MySpace was crap. There have been many iterations of social networks in the past decade, with Facebook the clear winner in the US. At this point the only way to compete is to spin off into something different, like Twitter, or find a niche. PokerNations found our niche.
As poker players, we were never left without a place to find each other on-line. Both MySpace and Facebook have poker communities that are searchable in their respective Groups functionality. As a Ning.com member I belong to various special interest networks created by members. Although limited, I found my share of poker buddies in his manner.
The search for a poker playing social network branched out to other dedicated web sites. Most added to the poker network category as a group blogging engine and little else.
Which brings me to the good news: Poker players now have a bone fide community in PokerNations.com. It has all the trimmings one would expect: user profiles, commenting, blogging, events, polls, forum…think MySpace. Don’t think Facebook because the design and functionality is not nearly as refined as Facebook. Yes, think MySpace, only without the glitter and animated gifs. (thanks God)
I’m not trying to discourage you from joining, just trying to manage your expectations. PokerNations is a very young web site and is bound to improve. They are off to a good start. They have relationships with the Poker Player’s Alliance, the Twitter Poker Tour and other online poker organizations. They have courted a few pros as members. They are integrated with Twitter and use keywords like apps and widgets to define them self. They even have a chip earning system to encourage activity on the site which can be used as entries for prizes including a (non-main event) WSOP Vegas trip.
Long story short, every on-line poker player should probably be a member of PokerNations just for the sake of community. They will no doubt host PokerNations endorsed tournaments and freerolls and rakeback and all the other poker playing/marketing tropes, some of which I may want in on and some of which I may block. When it comes down to it, poker players are online to play more than network, but when you’re invited to the party, I say there is no reason to be antisocial.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 13th, 2010 at 12:18 am and is filed under Picks of the Month. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
