Football Fans by Vubooo, an app to Interact with Soccer fans while watching Live Matches
by Paul Wilks
Feb 16, 2012 1:21 PM –
Install
Football Fans by Vubooo is a cool virtual space for football (soccer) fans to gather to enjoy a game. The app let’s you post messages, follow fellow fans, get up to date match information, receive highlight alerts and lots more. Whereas normally a fan might follow a hashtag on Twitter to exchange banter with others during a match, Vubooo instead offers a neat and well designed platform on your Android device.
Price: Free
Tested on: HTC Desire HD
Content Rating: Everyone
Pros & Cons:
Pros
- Neat design!
- Most of the top leagues in Europe covered!
- Huge potential!
Cons
- Too few users to feel the full benefit.
- Perhaps needs more interactive elements.
Features:
Straight away you can tell a lot of thought has gone into the app’s design. It’s straightforward to use and the tabs and buttons are responsive and intuitive. While I think some aspects could be better the app looks very good and is usable.
When you get started, you need to create your own profile. This will include a picture, the teams you are interested in and a small bio. From there you can ‘check in’ to football matches shortly before they are due to be played. I found it productive to see who else is going to be watching the match, select which are supporting my team and then ‘follow’ them, much like on Twitter and other social networks. When the game starts you can follow all their interactions and posts.
For testing purposes I opted to support an English team- Arsenal, as they took on AC Milan at the San Siro stadium. Arsenal, sadly got well and truly thrashed 4-0 but it was an interesting experience watching the game on my TV while following the game in the app.
While posting messages like “Good goal though”, “Arsenal are playing badly”, “Not another goal 
” and “AC Milan, please show some mercy!” you can also ‘Vuvu’ or ‘Booo’. Vuvu is essentially short for the Vuvuzela, the instrument which was adopted wholesale by football fans attending the World Cup finals in South Africa in 2010. It’s like a trumpet and while celebratory, 90 minutes of it is quite annoying. ‘Booo’-ing is obviously the global code for expressing contempt, very popular at a variety of events from sporting fixtures to bad theatre performances. In-app these merely express a positive or negative reaction- much like having a ‘Like’ or ‘Dislike’ button. I found myself booing a lot as Arsenal was beaten heavily, just feeling grateful they’re not my normal team.
I can see how this service, if it becomes popular might be a great way of following the game and exchanging banter. However, as it is, there isn’t much in the way of exchange between fans. The problem might be, however, that if there was, it might be very difficult to monitor in order to prevent abuse. At the moment, the app has a relatively small user base- of the fans signed in to watch AC Milan vs Arsenal there were about 18 on each side, so not much atmosphere.
I really like Vubooo and I’d love to see it expand and grow into a vital element of taking in a game (if you can’t attend it yourself), but it needs more fans to get involved in it and perhaps a means to communicate better with other spectators. As things are, the use of Twitter hashtags are far more interactive and still the ‘go to’ place for fans to banter.
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Vubooo – Live matches
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Vubooo – Match events
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Vubooo – Select a team
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Vubooo – Teamsheets
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Vubooo – Follow all matches being played
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Vubooo – Comments of all following the game
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Vubooo – Arsenal’s score was quite embarrassing
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Vubooo – Add new post
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Vubooo – Invite
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Vubooo – Check in
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Vubooo – Settings
Usefulness:
In many ways it reminded me a little of an app we reviewed a few months ago called LiveScore. In LiveScore you can follow the latest scores from matches played all around the world. On the surface, Football Fans operates in much the same way, but with extra features; such as interacting with the game itself- booing, vuvuing and commenting. I wish there was a way to respond to users, even if it was just the ability to boo or vuvu their comment. As it stands, each match page is just a stream of check-ins and comments.
On one hand then it’s a good app to follow a match, but the ways to interact, follow other users, comment on the action and boo/cheer take it up a level. The app arguably finds itself in between following a Twitter hashtag and checking a live scoring app like LiveScore. I enjoy the elements it adds, but I think it could do more.
Ease of Use:
It’s very intuitive to find your way around Football Fans. There are clear tabs and everything is sort of where you expect it. When you sign up, you automatically get a welcome message but I can’t see any way of sending other users messages. There’s no means to actually chat during the game so, while the ‘virtual stadium’ theme is a great idea, it would seem you can’t talk to the virtual spectator next to you.
Frequently Used:
Depending on how many teams you follow, or how much you are into football, this might be something you use 2 or 3 times a week to follow a game. It’s primed for use during a match so there’s not much use when no games are playing. If things like team news, transfer news, reactions, etc. were included the app might have more application outside match times.
Interface:
The interface is very polished and looks really good. Screens are well designed and, while I think it could do with the odd tweak here and there to make it even more intuitive, it’s a great start.
Tags:
Android App,
Android Apps,
AndroidTapp.com App Review,
Arsenal,
Barcelona,
Chelsea,
EPL,
Football,
Football Fans,
Liverpool,
LiveScore,
Man City,
Man Utd,
Manchester United,
Premier League,
Premiership,
Real Madrid,
Soccer,
Tottenham,
Vubooo
Categorised in: Sports
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