Watercooler Blog

Before the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, we created team apps for a variety of different countries.  The apps did fairly well during the three weeks of the Olympics, and the Great Britain app gained a modest 18,000 fans before plateauing.  Most of us here at Watercooler assumed that those apps would slowly lose interest once the games were over as fans moved on to bigger and better things.  However, we’ve been pleasantly surprised to notice that in approximately two weeks since December 24th, 2008, the Great Britain community has gained over 50,000 new users and continues to grow at an increasing rate. It now sits at almost 100,000 fans and surprisingly the answer is not sports related.

At Watercooler our goal is to “Make Sports and TV Social”, however how the fans perceive the social nature of our applications depends entirely on the core group of users that help mold the community in its early stages. When looking at our national Olympic applications it’s clear to see that many of them have morphed to take on theme of national pride usually related to some sort of a sport. For instance, the Portugal, Greece, and Spain team apps tend to revolve around soccer (even though we already have national soccer team apps for those countries),  while Finland, Canada, Sweden, and Russia, have a decidedly strong hockey tone to the content and discussion within those apps. Our goal at Watercooler is to bring fans together. We provide them the means and platform, and they have ultimately provided the stimulus, typically based on the popular theme-du-jour.

Looking specifically at the British team app, Andrew Hardman, an undoubtedly patriotic Brit, was inspired to use our application in a different way. Feeling strongly for two particular causes Andrew used our application to incite patriotism within his fellow Brits. He has created two waves, one titled “If you’re a Brit pass it on” and one titled “Support the Troops” which have been passed on by over 40,000 users, and 80,000 users respectively. This surge of patriotism has led to a massive influx of users seemingly driven by his patriotic efforts. Even the differences amongst the Scots, Irish, Welsh and English seem to disappear on our application as users promote a unified state with public displays of pride such as “Seems some people are missing the point, it’s Team Great Britain, not England, Come on Team GB in 2012″ and “I’m British and I am Proud of it!”. The users of the application feel so strongly about the troops, messages of support can be seen on the chain wall showing the true passion invoked in these users:

“you guys make me proud 2 b british!!well done and come home safe n sound.big hugs n kisses!!!!xxx” -Stacey

“We’d be in deep s**t without you guys! Take care + come home safe!” -Eleanor

“We are all behind you lads, about 12,000 miles safe at home while you fly the flag in some distant part of the globe, doing a great job - well done lads and lassess all of you take care and come home safely.” -David

The purpose of our applications at first was a step towards creating something that sparks the loyalty in a fan be it for their home country,  their home team, or a favorite team that they support no matter where on the globe it’s based. We want fans of any team to be able to connect to like-minded fans wherever they may be. We’re proud of the fact that our users have taken our applications and have been inspired to create a patriotic spark in their fellow countrymen on such a grand scale.