Fanatix Attempts to Bring the Second Screen Sports Viewing Experience to iOS

Posted by Carter Dotson on March 23rd, 2012

The "second screen" experience is still something being figured out by app developers, and a new app is ready to play ball to try and dominate their opponents. Fanatix hopes to integrate social features with live sports results to let its users track events while watching them more efficiently, and to be able to chat with friends also watching. The app aggregates tweets about the game, offers a Fan Stream that's a wall of Fanatix users chatting with each other, and a Group Chat of a user's friends to chat within themselves.

The app can connect with Facebook to log in, and to bring together friends who are interested in a given event's involved teams. It features iOS 5 Twitter account integration, a feature still sorely lacking from many apps, to let users tweet about the game they're tracking from within the app. Users can also check-in to events to say that they're watching them, attending them, or just tracking the match. The app appears to be built by non-Americans and/or soccer fans as the home team is displayed on top and in front of the visiting team, which is reverse of how American sports list teams: Visting at Home. It's a curious wrinkle. The app still tracks red-blooded American sports like baseball, though. The app is available now for free.