In all of this March Madness, one site has peaked my interest a bit. It was TweetBracket. TweetBracket is a test application for 140Bets who is building a platform to allow users to make binary selections, have the information tweeted out (optional), and then have it seamlessly track all of your picks against those of your friends. For the NCAA tournament, 140Bets has set-up a demonstration with TweetBracket in which users select which team they think will win, and 140Bets does the rest. To make it interesting, it is providing prizes like HDTVs and a trip to the 2011 Final Four.

Daily and simple fantasy sports are one of the larger growth markets in the fantasy industry right now(Fanball and NBC Sports‘ SnapDraft has already paid out over $2M in prizes). 140Bets’ approach is the most interesting, because it is building on top of an established platform like Twitter makes the game easily accessible to millions, easy to play, and could potentially benefit from the viral growth that social networks can have. While TweetBracket is just a technology demonstration, but I like to think that it gives us an idea that there just might be a number of different ways to play fantasy sports in the future.

Other sites, such as FanDuel, are already exploring fantasy games played on Twitter, so TweetBracket is not unique. However, the fact that everything is heavily integrated with Twitter is truly remarkable. TweetBracket players just have to log into their Twitter accounts and they are good to go. That’s a really nice feature. Something more sites need to do (or use Facebook Connect). 140Bets’ games are much more like an extension of Twitter than its own site.

What are your thoughts on the direction that 140Bets is taking?

The easiest way to get people to do something new is to make it free, offer prizes, and make it similar to things that they are used to doing. FanDuel’s Tweetball fantasy football is a simple game that easily meets all of these criteria, while creating a simple and elegant fantasy football game that is played exclusively on Twitter.

FanDuel is hosting this game to drive traffic towards its main suite of pay-to-play fantasy sports games that you can find on its site (See: FanDuel Launches Fast Head-To-Head Fantasy. Aside from finding a simple, low-cost way to market itself, Tweetball may ultimately be a product that FanDuel can build a business around. It is easy and fun to play, does not require fantasy players to change their behavior (as long they tweet), and is easily accessibly by anyone. Plus, add in the potential for the game grow via a viral expansion loop, and FanDuel ultimately may have a success on its hands.

To play Fanduel’s weekly fantasy football twitter game, a player tweets a quarterback, running back, and wide receiver and includes the “#fanduel” tag and a link to the game (as pictured above–pretty simple, eh?). The team with the most points each week wins a Fathead of its choice.

Tweet and win!

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

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