Google and Nike are starting an online soccer community

[Jojo]

This summer is the soccer world cup in Germany, so Google and Nike are starting the online soccer community Joga.com:

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.

But most of all, Joga is about "Joga Bonito" -- Portuguese for "play beautiful." Are you ready to start down the path of soccer bliss? Join us, and show the world what playing beautiful means to you.

[rustybrick]

So now would Google do this?

[dazzlindonna]

I assume they want to get into the content biz to compete with Yahoo and MSN on that front. But I wish they'd concentrate a bit more on getting search right.

[rustybrick]

Or is it an international branding thing also?

[Jojo]

I assume they use mostly the Orkut code for this community. At least the images are hosted on orkut.com and the description sounds like Orkut for me. Of course for Nike this is purely branding, but I am wondering what Google´s interest in this is. I don´t think they are doing this because of branding or content. Maybe they hope to start an online community without that much Brasilian users and a more balanced user base.

[johnmarsh1]

it's great to google enter in football community site. although site is not open in my pc. don't know what happen.