Google & Nike Team for Joga.com Football (Soccer) Community
Just in time for the World Cup Google and Nike have joined forces to launch Joga.com, a niche targeted online community for Jogadors, players of football (or soccer). The Orkut for Football (Soccer, Futbol) Players is currently by invite only.
Joga is an online community created by Google and Nike for anyone anywhere in the world who shares a love for soccer, the world’s most popular sport. Joga is about getting to know your fellow fans; creating games and clubs; accessing athletes from Nike; and enjoying video clips and photos (you can even upload your own). You can strengthen existing friendships and begin new ones, join a wide variety of professional athletes and soccer communities, and even create your own to discuss soccer, exchange tips on the coolest moves, browse through various pitches worldwide, and plan your next game.
Joga.com also offers blogs! Here’s a nice rundown of the system with screenshots via SEOCase.net. With some much blogging and content going on at Joga.com, one has to assume that Google & Nike would be opening the gates to their walled garden after some time – in an effort to share the world’s information of course.
It is of no coincidence that Joga is Portuguese for “to play” and Google’s core online community Orkut is 74% Brazilian. And in case you didn’t know, the world of Football revolves around Brazil. Additionally, two members of Team Brasil Ronaldo and Rondaldinho are featured on the Joga.com homepage.
All in all this is a smart move by Nike Football to get more exposure in the middle class Brazilian Futbol community and Google to use the International draw of Football / Soccer to build upon their lagging community efforts (outside of Brazil). It will be exciting to see the amount of football players from Japan, US, England, Germany, Brazil and Argentina among other countries conversing, swapping ideas, reviewing products and meeting via Joga.com.
