If you have visited Fantasy Players lately, gone is its circa-2001 CBSSports.com looking website. Now, Fantasy Players is a consolidated Twitter feed for some of the Fantasy Players network’s fantasy football expert. In addition, the fantasy advice is now powered by the McDonald’s Dollar Menu.

Fantasy Players has always been a showcase for Fantasy Sports Ventures’ (FSV) network of affiliates. This site change actually reduces the amount of information available to fantasy players as it only showcasing content from six fantasy sites, instead of the dozens and dozens of FSV affiliates that were showcased on Fantasy Players.

Fantasy Sports Ventures is attempting show that it is innovative by having a Twitter-themed fantasy site, but this site make it seem like they are just following the latest buzz word. Any Twitter user would recognize the site as just multiple Twitter feeds that he could just follow on his own. What is really odd about the site is the fact that the twitter @fpntweets account (which is actually an interesting feed) has entirely different content than what you see on the twitterized Fantasy Players.

This is not the first time Fantasy Players has changed itself for a sponsor. During the 2009 March Madness, Fantasy Players redirected to Bobby Knight’s and Billy Packer’s Survive and Advance site, which was sponsored by Irish Spring. Expect this current rendition of Fantasy Players to be a temporary move as well.

Note: I previously worked at Fantasy Sports Ventures from 2007 – 2008

Every season it happens to one of the major fantasy sites, and unfortuantely, it was ESPN’s turn this season. Shortly after kickoff yesterday, Mashable! reported that ESPN Fantasy Football is Down. According to complaints about the service on Mashable! and Twitter, fantasy players were unable to log in to make roster adjustments and last minute waiver moves on Sunday. It is unclear if this issue has been resolved for Week 5.

What is really odd about this loss of service is that it happened in the fourth week of the season. Generally, when fantasy products fail it is in the first week or two of the fantasy season, since the game engines, with all of their new features, have not been tested by the masses. But, by now, system bugs are usually worked out of the system.

This is not the first time ESPN has had an early season failure, but it the first since its fantasy baseball game fabulously crashed at the start of the 2007. Every fantasy site has its issues (fantasy software on a large scale is actually really complicated problem), so this is not shocking, but just an unfortunate turn of events and just an unfortunate consequence of doing business.

I have requested comment from ESPN’s Matthew Berry, and will update this story once I receive a comment.

Let’s see if the downtime gets brought up during Christopher Harris’ 11:00am chat or Matthew Berry’s 3:00pm chat.

You have to love it when a league fully embraces new technology. The National Hockey League (NHL) is going full-bore with social media and is finding new ways to engage its fans. The NHL is hosting a fantasy hockey pick’em game tonight that can only be played via Twitter.

Playing the game is pretty simple. To enter, fantasy players tweet a reply to @nhl with a predicted winner for each of today’s fifteen hockey games plus provide a guess of the league’s total penalty minutes for the night, and put the special hashtag #nhlpick15 in the tweet. The prizes are tickets and NHL GameCenter Live. Not too shabby for tweeting, and costs the league practically nothing to provide. It is a win-win for everyone.

Whenever launching a new fantasy game, the least amount of education you have to do, the better. With this game, most people understand pick’em leagues, and twitter users understand twitter. While this game may appeal to a limited number of fans, it is really simple game for those fans to play. Simplicity is what makes fantasy games work and grow.

As a side note, this game is a product of Vayner Media, who is also working the New York Jets on some social media activities. Do not be surprised to see Vayner Media all over the social sports media scene in the future (as if they are not already).

Additional Coverage:
The NHL’s Latest Social Media Push: A Twitter Contest

It has been a long while since I have really had fun with fantasy football. After focusing on the fantasy industry so intently for the last three years, I think I burned out on it. I posted twice in September. Yeah, that’s a pretty sad number, but I needed to step away from it for a while. Now, I am focusing on playing the game. That is something that I have not done since the 2005 season, and wow, is this so much fun again.

Over the last few years, I managed five or six teams at a time, and most of the teams were put on autopilot. I drafted the guys that were supposed to perform, cut players as I went, and made waiver wire pick-ups as teams needed them. However, no team really got the full attention that it deserved and/or needed. I did it because I was supposed to, not because I wanted to.

Now, with just two teams in two different friend leagues, I am having a blast. The message boards are full with friendly, yet biting banter over waiver wire pick-ups, trades, and whether Michael Vick is worth a shot. The interaction with friends, crunching numbers (I am an engineer at all), and predicting what is going to happen is what lured me into this industry. I actually worry about my teams winning and losing

I got into the fantasy business because this was fun for me. Somewhere along the lines, it stopped being fun and was about a business. This site has had too many starts and stops in its short life, but that is just part of the process. Determining what I really want, what I want this site to be, and how do I get there. Fantasy sports are supposed to be fun, and I’m going to make sure it stays fun for me.

When I’m having fun, you’ll have fun, since this means there is a lot of great content about to start coming at you.