10 ms·

Show HN: My NBA + Twitter mashup

98 points by billcurt 13y ago

dialsquare1886 13y ago
Good work! Just what I needed!
jburgueno 13y ago
Really good idea! but the best is that the UI looks and feels really great. Great job.
- billcurt 13y ago
  Hey thanks for the note :)
rserna 13y ago
Pretty cool stuff. Maybe you should consider mixing up the tweets a bit though. Right now they seem to be strictly in chronological order and sometimes players shoot out 3 or 4 tweets at a time, so how about mixing it a bit so it's still in relative chronological order, but mix in other players. Not sure if that conveys what I'm thinking though.
- billcurt 13y ago
  Ah I see what you mean, cool idea! Will see what I can cook up.
  - pionar 13y ago
    This is really awesome. One suggestion, make it more user-friendly by turning twitter handles into links, and web links as well.
    - billcurt 13y ago
      True, this is the case for individual tweets but not in the list view, noted.
danielna 13y ago
Cool idea. I'm a diehard Washington Wizards fan (sad, I know) and tend to unfollow a lot of players in favor of reports/beat writers/bloggers. The tweets are just more substantive for basketball junkies. A couple of random thoughts: 1) Remove the directed tweets -- i.e. "@user blah blah blah" 2) Beat writers/bloggers act as a filter and tend to retweet interesting player tweets anyway 3) It'd be awesome to see a real-time, in-game twitter dashboard like how you're displaying things now, but with those bloggers/reporters. It can be hard to keep track of it all on a single-line twitter feed... maybe a tweet that gets a lot of "action" somehow (retweets, replies, not sure how you'd measure it) could be displayed more prominently.
- billcurt 13y ago
  Great insight, love hearing this stuff from active sports followers. Yeah I'll remove those @user posts, good call. The real-time stuff, totally. That stuff's really exciting to think about (and build!). Anything to connect people better with their teams.
- joezhou 13y ago
  Wow, +1 for diehard Wizards fan.
  - noname123 13y ago
    They have a pretty good backcourt with Beal and Wall. If they can unload the attractive expiring massive contract of Okafor and Nene via trades, they can rebuild the team. The Wizards always had potential from having Webber and Ben Wallace prior to their prime; then to having Michael Jordan in come back and then to Agent Zero. The problem was bad luck with Arenas injury, bad Kwame Brown pick.
- ssharp 13y ago
  I'll definitely back up the desire to see feeds of reporters and bloggers rather than, or in addition to, players. For example, I'm a Cavs fan. Big news right now is the Cavs' search for a new head coach. I'm much more interested in that than I am C.J. Miles' desire to get "custom car stuff" done, which is what his last tweet was about :) But players aren't going to be tweeting about the coaching search, most likely.
abdophoto 13y ago
This is great. Thank you!
- billcurt 13y ago
  My pleasure!
  - ritonlajoie 13y ago
    The UI is very nice, I am really impressed. What did you use to make that ?
    - billcurt 13y ago
      Credit goes to @desandro on twitter for creating this magical library http://isotope.metafizzy.co/ http://isotope.metafizzy.co/
joezhou 13y ago
Love the infini scrolling, wasn't clear in the beginning though b/c there's no load spinner
- billcurt 13y ago
  Good point, added to the list. Thanks!
prpetten 13y ago
Cool stuff, do you have an open-source version? I'd love to use this type of format for similar stuff I'm working on.
- billcurt 13y ago
  Check out http://isotope.metafizzy.co/ http://isotope.metafizzy.co/ created by David DeSandro. You'll be able to do just about everything you see with it :)
  - prpetten 13y ago
    Awesome! Thanks, I'm going to add it to http://verbalcommits.com http://verbalcommits.com
mattezell 13y ago
I really like this! Admittedly, I am not a roundball enthusiast and know little of the sport, so take my 2-cents for what they are worth. I've clicked around a bit, just to get a feel for the app, and it seems really nice. I love the transitions when selecting a team - very nice.. I also really like how resizing and scaling is handled - it seems that lot of effort was put into how the layout and contents shift around on resize and scale... Very nice. One small potential enhancement (solely aesthetics) would be to apply the same UI transition behavior when clicking the site logo so that it smoothly transitions back to home just as it does when selecting a team. In any case, Kudos! Nice looking site - I am sharing this out to my non-HN, pro-basketball, Twitter using friends!
- billcurt 13y ago
  Hey thanks for the tip, noted. Glad you enjoy it!
mccolin 13y ago
This is really cool. Would love to see further expansion into other leagues.
- billcurt 13y ago
  Totally, which league(s) would you like to see added next?
  - titlex 13y ago
    NFL please!
    - billcurt 13y ago
      Cool cool, added to the roadmap. Follow @tweetsFC to stay posted!
  - avalaunch 13y ago
    Beautiful. Well done! Have you seen tweeting-athletes.com? Might be a good way to grab the twitter handles for additional sports.
  - mccolin 13y ago
    All of the major US sports (NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL) would be great.
    - billcurt 13y ago
      Roger that! Stay tuned via @tweetsFC :)
SurfScore 13y ago
This is awesome. I love the Celtics, but I had to go search all the players out manually when I wanted to follow them. The only problem is most NBA players don't exactly give you...substantial...information in their many tweets.
kylelibra 13y ago
This is great. I'd love to see this for other sports.
- billcurt 13y ago
  Totally, what's the next sport you'd want to see? I've added a few soccer teams already you can check out at http://tweetsfc.com/soccer http://tweetsfc.com/soccer
- podman 13y ago
  I built something simliar to this back in 2009 for college football coaches. I was planning on adding more for other sports as well as for players but there weren't too many using twitter back then: http://web.archive.org/web/20100325212936/http://www.coachtweets.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20100325212936/http://www.coachtw... Seems like everyone is tweeting these days and this is a much slicker interface than the one I built. Good job!
watercup 13y ago
This is decent. If you like it you should look into tintup.com
- flowerntea 13y ago
  http://www.dallascowboys.com/news/tony-romo-contract.html http://www.dallascowboys.com/news/tony-romo-contract.html The Cowboys are using it.
manoji 13y ago
Amazing idea .really love it . How come there is no Dwyane Wade ?
- billcurt 13y ago
  Woah, can't believe I missed that! Thanks for the heads up, fixed now. http://www.tweetsfc.com/basketball/team/miami-heat http://www.tweetsfc.com/basketball/team/miami-heat
prg318 13y ago
It looks like someone [1] already had a similar idea, but I like the interface of tweetsfc over Hashtag Basketball. Your site looks a lot more professional. Its also nice to see the follow links to each player's twitter. I will be sharing this with my other NBA-fan friends! [1] http://hashtagbasketball.com/ http://hashtagbasketball.com/
mediagearbox 13y ago
This is brilliant, well done!
- billcurt 13y ago
  Thank you!
mattkahl 13y ago
Looks awesome! Great idea and execution. I tweeted it at Jalen Rose and Bill Simmons. Minor things: - You're throwing a bunch of log statements right now. Might be taking down the javascript in IE (I didn't see if you wrapped `console.log`). - Remember, `this.$el` can replace `$(this.el)` (gotta love those convenience methods, I see you're using `this.$(selector)`). - Also, UnderscoreJS provides `_.isUndefined` and `_.has` which is a little nicer than the `typeof foo.bar !== undefined` test.
- billcurt 13y ago
  Wow, thank you. To be honest I'm quite new to js, especially backbone and those other util libs like underscore. Really appreciate the CR, will fix shortly.
xlance 13y ago
Couldn't this work for everything else as well? Curated lists for different gatherings of people? "Everyone playing in this golf tourney/chess tourney" "Everyone on the set of Game of Thrones/The Walking dead" "Every CEO of Fortune 500"
- billcurt 13y ago
  In its current state, absolutely. That would be really cool actually. I do have some more sports specific enhancements on the roadmap which may or may not fit well with general topics groups of tweeters.
banders 13y ago
Nice Work! I'm curious, it says "Built with ESPN", did you use the ESPN API?
- billcurt 13y ago
  Hey thanks! Yeah I should clarify on the site, I'm just using a few open ESPN APIs. http://developer.espn.com/docs http://developer.espn.com/docs
phreeza 13y ago
At first I read: My MBA + Twitter mashup, and was wondering what on earth that might be.
ashbrahma 13y ago
Check out the CBS Sports app on iOS and Android. It has curated Twitter lists for all sports and leagues - iOS : https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cbs-sports/id307184892?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cbs-sports/id307184892?mt=8 ; Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.handmark.sportcaster&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.handmark.s...
- jonaldomo 13y ago
  Interesting note: CBS Sports app is developed by a Kansas City, MO mobile development company called Handmark.
  - ashbrahma 13y ago
    Sorry - I meant to put a disclaimer on it. I work at Handmark and we had originally developed an app called Sportcaster that got rebranded as CBS Sports this year.
kohanz 13y ago
Graet job! I'm a die-hard and long-suffering Raptors fan and would definitely peruse this page from time to time. I'm also working on a web app in the NBA space, so I'm inspired by your work.
- billcurt 13y ago
  Cheers man - from a fellow Canadian.
nmkn 13y ago
This is super slick! I'm digging the interface. I'm assuming that you used ESPN's api in someway because I see their logo at the bottom. Which api's did you end up using if you don't mind me asking?
- billcurt 13y ago
  Hey thanks man! ESPN has a handful of open apis that I'm using, mainly the atheltes and teams resources. Check out the full list at http://developer.espn.com/docs http://developer.espn.com/docs
akmiller 13y ago
I actually started doing something similar to follow my own teams (thought someday I'd expand but just never have). Anyhow, one thing we've found is that player tweets are generally worthless and as others have already noted the bloggers/writers and just conversational tweets surrounding teams are often more informative. Here is my page (which is not near as nice as yours but I really just built it for me to follow news regarding my Chiefs!): http://sportszealots.com/1-Kansas-City-Chiefs.html http://sportszealots.com/1-Kansas-City-Chiefs.html
- billcurt 13y ago
  I've heard this comment from a number of people, thanks for posting. I agree, an aggregate of bloggers/writer alongside player tweets would be a nice added value, thinkin' on it.
jonsagara 13y ago
Lifelong Kings fan here. Nice work!
edwinnathaniel 13y ago
This is pretty sweet. I have a small website related to NBA[1] as well that I built on my free time (many moons ago). Haven't updated the site yet but will definitely update it again for the next season. [1] www.nbaschedulesapp.com
ioddly 13y ago
Looks real cool man! You've got the wrong James Anderson on the Rockets page. I don't think he has a twitter, actually.
- billcurt 13y ago
  You're right, just removed him. Thanks for the tip.
ringular 13y ago
Hooray for having soccer teams in there! I'm going to use this to keep tabs on Juventus! :D
p0larboy 13y ago
pushstate?
- billcurt 13y ago
  You bet. Helps me sleep at night.
mathattack 13y ago
For what it's worth, the first thing I did was send it to my brother with, "Hey, your kids may be interested in this." That was a reaction independent of any bias towards the source. Great work - I think you're on to something!

98 points by billcurt 13y ago

dialsquare1886 13y ago

Good work! Just what I needed!

jburgueno 13y ago

Really good idea! but the best is that the UI looks and feels really great. Great job.

billcurt 13y ago
Hey thanks for the note :)

rserna 13y ago

Pretty cool stuff. Maybe you should consider mixing up the tweets a bit though. Right now they seem to be strictly in chronological order and sometimes players shoot out 3 or 4 tweets at a time, so how about mixing it a bit so it's still in relative chronological order, but mix in other players. Not sure if that conveys what I'm thinking though.

billcurt 13y ago
Ah I see what you mean, cool idea! Will see what I can cook up.
- pionar 13y ago
  This is really awesome. One suggestion, make it more user-friendly by turning twitter handles into links, and web links as well.
  - billcurt 13y ago
    True, this is the case for individual tweets but not in the list view, noted.

danielna 13y ago

Cool idea. I'm a diehard Washington Wizards fan (sad, I know) and tend to unfollow a lot of players in favor of reports/beat writers/bloggers. The tweets are just more substantive for basketball junkies. A couple of random thoughts: 1) Remove the directed tweets -- i.e. "@user blah blah blah" 2) Beat writers/bloggers act as a filter and tend to retweet interesting player tweets anyway 3) It'd be awesome to see a real-time, in-game twitter dashboard like how you're displaying things now, but with those bloggers/reporters. It can be hard to keep track of it all on a single-line twitter feed... maybe a tweet that gets a lot of "action" somehow (retweets, replies, not sure how you'd measure it) could be displayed more prominently.

billcurt 13y ago
Great insight, love hearing this stuff from active sports followers. Yeah I'll remove those @user posts, good call. The real-time stuff, totally. That stuff's really exciting to think about (and build!). Anything to connect people better with their teams.
joezhou 13y ago
Wow, +1 for diehard Wizards fan.
- noname123 13y ago
  They have a pretty good backcourt with Beal and Wall. If they can unload the attractive expiring massive contract of Okafor and Nene via trades, they can rebuild the team. The Wizards always had potential from having Webber and Ben Wallace prior to their prime; then to having Michael Jordan in come back and then to Agent Zero. The problem was bad luck with Arenas injury, bad Kwame Brown pick.
ssharp 13y ago
I'll definitely back up the desire to see feeds of reporters and bloggers rather than, or in addition to, players. For example, I'm a Cavs fan. Big news right now is the Cavs' search for a new head coach. I'm much more interested in that than I am C.J. Miles' desire to get "custom car stuff" done, which is what his last tweet was about :) But players aren't going to be tweeting about the coaching search, most likely.

abdophoto 13y ago

This is great. Thank you!

billcurt 13y ago
My pleasure!
- ritonlajoie 13y ago
  The UI is very nice, I am really impressed. What did you use to make that ?
  - billcurt 13y ago
    Credit goes to @desandro on twitter for creating this magical library http://isotope.metafizzy.co/ http://isotope.metafizzy.co/

joezhou 13y ago

Love the infini scrolling, wasn't clear in the beginning though b/c there's no load spinner

billcurt 13y ago
Good point, added to the list. Thanks!

prpetten 13y ago

Cool stuff, do you have an open-source version? I'd love to use this type of format for similar stuff I'm working on.

billcurt 13y ago
Check out http://isotope.metafizzy.co/ http://isotope.metafizzy.co/ created by David DeSandro. You'll be able to do just about everything you see with it :)
- prpetten 13y ago
  Awesome! Thanks, I'm going to add it to http://verbalcommits.com http://verbalcommits.com

mattezell 13y ago

I really like this! Admittedly, I am not a roundball enthusiast and know little of the sport, so take my 2-cents for what they are worth. I've clicked around a bit, just to get a feel for the app, and it seems really nice. I love the transitions when selecting a team - very nice.. I also really like how resizing and scaling is handled - it seems that lot of effort was put into how the layout and contents shift around on resize and scale... Very nice. One small potential enhancement (solely aesthetics) would be to apply the same UI transition behavior when clicking the site logo so that it smoothly transitions back to home just as it does when selecting a team. In any case, Kudos! Nice looking site - I am sharing this out to my non-HN, pro-basketball, Twitter using friends!

billcurt 13y ago
Hey thanks for the tip, noted. Glad you enjoy it!

mccolin 13y ago

This is really cool. Would love to see further expansion into other leagues.

billcurt 13y ago
Totally, which league(s) would you like to see added next?
- titlex 13y ago
  NFL please!
  - billcurt 13y ago
    Cool cool, added to the roadmap. Follow @tweetsFC to stay posted!
- avalaunch 13y ago
  Beautiful. Well done! Have you seen tweeting-athletes.com? Might be a good way to grab the twitter handles for additional sports.
- mccolin 13y ago
  All of the major US sports (NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL) would be great.
  - billcurt 13y ago
    Roger that! Stay tuned via @tweetsFC :)

SurfScore 13y ago

This is awesome. I love the Celtics, but I had to go search all the players out manually when I wanted to follow them. The only problem is most NBA players don't exactly give you...substantial...information in their many tweets.

kylelibra 13y ago

This is great. I'd love to see this for other sports.

billcurt 13y ago
Totally, what's the next sport you'd want to see? I've added a few soccer teams already you can check out at http://tweetsfc.com/soccer http://tweetsfc.com/soccer
podman 13y ago
I built something simliar to this back in 2009 for college football coaches. I was planning on adding more for other sports as well as for players but there weren't too many using twitter back then: http://web.archive.org/web/20100325212936/http://www.coachtweets.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20100325212936/http://www.coachtw... Seems like everyone is tweeting these days and this is a much slicker interface than the one I built. Good job!

watercup 13y ago

This is decent. If you like it you should look into tintup.com

flowerntea 13y ago
http://www.dallascowboys.com/news/tony-romo-contract.html http://www.dallascowboys.com/news/tony-romo-contract.html The Cowboys are using it.

manoji 13y ago

Amazing idea .really love it . How come there is no Dwyane Wade ?

billcurt 13y ago
Woah, can't believe I missed that! Thanks for the heads up, fixed now. http://www.tweetsfc.com/basketball/team/miami-heat http://www.tweetsfc.com/basketball/team/miami-heat

prg318 13y ago

It looks like someone [1] already had a similar idea, but I like the interface of tweetsfc over Hashtag Basketball. Your site looks a lot more professional. Its also nice to see the follow links to each player's twitter. I will be sharing this with my other NBA-fan friends! [1] http://hashtagbasketball.com/ http://hashtagbasketball.com/

mediagearbox 13y ago

This is brilliant, well done!

billcurt 13y ago
Thank you!

mattkahl 13y ago

Looks awesome! Great idea and execution. I tweeted it at Jalen Rose and Bill Simmons. Minor things: - You're throwing a bunch of log statements right now. Might be taking down the javascript in IE (I didn't see if you wrapped `console.log`). - Remember, `this.$el` can replace `$(this.el)` (gotta love those convenience methods, I see you're using `this.$(selector)`). - Also, UnderscoreJS provides `_.isUndefined` and `_.has` which is a little nicer than the `typeof foo.bar !== undefined` test.

billcurt 13y ago
Wow, thank you. To be honest I'm quite new to js, especially backbone and those other util libs like underscore. Really appreciate the CR, will fix shortly.

xlance 13y ago

Couldn't this work for everything else as well? Curated lists for different gatherings of people? "Everyone playing in this golf tourney/chess tourney" "Everyone on the set of Game of Thrones/The Walking dead" "Every CEO of Fortune 500"

billcurt 13y ago
In its current state, absolutely. That would be really cool actually. I do have some more sports specific enhancements on the roadmap which may or may not fit well with general topics groups of tweeters.

banders 13y ago

Nice Work! I'm curious, it says "Built with ESPN", did you use the ESPN API?

billcurt 13y ago
Hey thanks! Yeah I should clarify on the site, I'm just using a few open ESPN APIs. http://developer.espn.com/docs http://developer.espn.com/docs

phreeza 13y ago

At first I read: My MBA + Twitter mashup, and was wondering what on earth that might be.

ashbrahma 13y ago

Check out the CBS Sports app on iOS and Android. It has curated Twitter lists for all sports and leagues - iOS : https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cbs-sports/id307184892?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cbs-sports/id307184892?mt=8 ; Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.handmark.sportcaster&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.handmark.s...

jonaldomo 13y ago
Interesting note: CBS Sports app is developed by a Kansas City, MO mobile development company called Handmark.
- ashbrahma 13y ago
  Sorry - I meant to put a disclaimer on it. I work at Handmark and we had originally developed an app called Sportcaster that got rebranded as CBS Sports this year.

kohanz 13y ago

Graet job! I'm a die-hard and long-suffering Raptors fan and would definitely peruse this page from time to time. I'm also working on a web app in the NBA space, so I'm inspired by your work.

billcurt 13y ago
Cheers man - from a fellow Canadian.

nmkn 13y ago

This is super slick! I'm digging the interface. I'm assuming that you used ESPN's api in someway because I see their logo at the bottom. Which api's did you end up using if you don't mind me asking?

billcurt 13y ago
Hey thanks man! ESPN has a handful of open apis that I'm using, mainly the atheltes and teams resources. Check out the full list at http://developer.espn.com/docs http://developer.espn.com/docs

akmiller 13y ago

I actually started doing something similar to follow my own teams (thought someday I'd expand but just never have). Anyhow, one thing we've found is that player tweets are generally worthless and as others have already noted the bloggers/writers and just conversational tweets surrounding teams are often more informative. Here is my page (which is not near as nice as yours but I really just built it for me to follow news regarding my Chiefs!): http://sportszealots.com/1-Kansas-City-Chiefs.html http://sportszealots.com/1-Kansas-City-Chiefs.html

billcurt 13y ago
I've heard this comment from a number of people, thanks for posting. I agree, an aggregate of bloggers/writer alongside player tweets would be a nice added value, thinkin' on it.

jonsagara 13y ago

Lifelong Kings fan here. Nice work!

edwinnathaniel 13y ago

This is pretty sweet. I have a small website related to NBA[1] as well that I built on my free time (many moons ago). Haven't updated the site yet but will definitely update it again for the next season. [1] www.nbaschedulesapp.com

ioddly 13y ago

Looks real cool man! You've got the wrong James Anderson on the Rockets page. I don't think he has a twitter, actually.

billcurt 13y ago
You're right, just removed him. Thanks for the tip.

ringular 13y ago

Hooray for having soccer teams in there! I'm going to use this to keep tabs on Juventus! :D

p0larboy 13y ago

pushstate?

billcurt 13y ago
You bet. Helps me sleep at night.

mathattack 13y ago

For what it's worth, the first thing I did was send it to my brother with, "Hey, your kids may be interested in this." That was a reaction independent of any bias towards the source. Great work - I think you're on to something!