GRV Media is soft-launching its TalkingPoints initiative on top Manchester United fan site United In Focus today.
The initiative is a response to Google’s recent moves to seemingly pare back its commitment to the Open Web.
Vic Daniels, GRV Media’s Executive Chairman, said: ‘Our readers have been telling us that recent Google changes have resulted in them not seeing much sports content in their Discover feeds, and that Google doesn’t surface up the kind of news they wish to consume anymore. TalkingPoints is our response to that – a non toxic platform that will enable sports fans to engage with our writers and each other, and to share and comment on all sports issues that matter to them. We are building our own platform that will future proof us from Google Zero, and which will exist outside Big Tech eco-systems’.
Ed Watkinson, GRV Media’s Global Head of Content Strategy, said: ‘Sports publishers in particular have been adversely impacted by recent Google changes, but we think that this has provided us and other publishers with a big opportunity to re-engage with their readers, and to fill the gap Google has created by its downweighting of the niche sports content fans really love. Through TalkingPoints, GRV will deliver timely fan-focused content that fans are telling us they want. We are excited to have started this journey’.
Vic Daniels continued: ‘We plan to roll out TalkingPoints to all our websites in the next week or two. We have responded quickly to Google’s recent changes, and have moved fast and have broken things! We already have a lot more TalkingPoints features coming down the track, and many of these will be unveiled relatively quickly. Please bear with us if we don’t get it all right the first time!’.
Check out TalkingPoints on Unitedinfocus.com