FanChatter.com to Launch at MinneDemo

Web venture will demonstrate its mobile sports fan chat and photo sharing utility at Minnesota's foremost technology showcase event.

St. Paul, MN (PRWEB) October 10, 2007 - Mobile sports fan chat utility FanChatter.com will announce its official launch at MinneDemo 2007, Minnesota's foremost technology showcase event to be held at O'Gara's Garage in St. Paul on Thursday, October 11th.

FanChatter allows users to talk sports and share photos with their friends from anywhere, anytime, all at once -- via text messaging, mobile photo messaging, email, and web. Sports fans can use these platforms to post and receive chatter and participate in user-created sports chat groups.

MinneDemo gives us a unique chance to walk through our functionality before an audience of our peers

"We're excited to offer fans the ability to connect with each other whether they're at the game, at the bar, at work, or anywhere in-between," said FanChatter co-founder Marty Wetherall. "Our mobile feature alerts you when one of your friends is talking sports and lets you chatter back and forth from your phone or email."

FanChatter users activate their mobile device(s) and add their friends on the site to their "Lineup." Any chatter from a user's Lineup is forwarded to their mobile device, and they can also choose to receive group chatter alerts. Lineup and group alerts can be turned on or off anytime from their mobile device or from the FanChatter.com site.

A modern mobile update of traditional sports forums and message boards, FanChatter.com is live and 100% functional following three months of testing. During that time fans have chattered from the NBA Draft in New York City, a kayak in San Francisco's McCovey Cove during the MLB Home Run Derby, numerous Minnesota sporting events, and recently the Chicago Cubs' Game 3 playoff loss at Wrigley Field.

Now MinneDemo will host an introductory demonstration of the FanChatter utility.

"MinneDemo gives us a unique chance to walk through our functionality before an audience of our peers," said Wetherall. "There's so much exciting development work being done right now in Minnesota. We feel honored to be presenting."

MinneDemo (http://minnedemo.org/) is Minnesota's version of BarCamp, an international network of open, participatory workshop events often focusing on early-stage web applications. Organized locally by tech entrepreneur Dan Grigsby and developer Luke Francl, MinneDemo 2007 is sponsored by Upper Midwest businesses Kinetic Data, Split Rock Partners, New Counsel PLC, ipHouse, and Electric Pulp. FanChatter is one of six scheduled 15-minute demonstrations. Other presenters include CrashPlan, SotaComm, WonderFile, Pokeware, and Adaptive Avenue.

Following their formal debut at MinneDemo, FanChatter plans to quickly grow their user base while continuing to develop new sports fan communication tools, such as the recently added photo sharing feature and RSS feeds that allow chatter to stream through outside news readers, blogs, and other web applications. They also plan to attract advertisers by offering innovative sports fan targeting and messaging capabilities.                                                    

About FanChatter:
A Minnesota company, FanChatter (http://fanchatter.com/) is the joint creation of Fanacious, Inc. of Minneapolis and Slantwise Design (http://slantwisedesign.com/) of Hopkins.

Wetherall, 34, is founder and creative director of Fanacious, Inc., a sports social networking company, and is also senior producer at top creative advertising agency Fallon. His credits include the EDS Super Bowl campaign ("Cat Herders", "Airplane", and "Running With The Squirrels") and independent marketing work for the Minnesota Twins, Minnesota Timberwolves and Minnesota Vikings. In 2003, he created The Show To Be Named Later, a "Sports Fan Reality Show" that aired first on community access television and later on Twin Cities NBC-affiliate KARE 11 in 2005. He is a graduate of the USC School of Cinematic Arts.

Slantwise Design is a web design and software development studio founded in 2003 by Jonathan Dahl and Todd Emmel. The company creates usable designs and robust web applications using rapid, agile development methods. Clients range from startups to the enterprise. Most recently, Slantwise has been focused on mobile/web integration, video transcoding systems, and Facebook applications. Slantwise built FanChatter using the Ruby on Rails framework.

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