South African soccer fans. Photo: Media Club South Africa
If you want to know straight from the fans how they are feeling about the 2010 FIFA World Cup, Winkball.com is an interesting site to look at. You can even record your own match report and stand a chance to win £1000.00.
Winkball is a user-friendly website that enables communication through video. All you need is a computer with internet and a webcam. The ball-shape of a webcamera that you can attach to your computer was probably part of the idea behind the website’s name, while “wink” refers to the personal nature of video communication, where you can see a person’s facial expressions, winks and smiles.
You Tube is all about uploading and watching videos and Skype enables live chatting via a webcam. While Winkball also has live chatting capabilities, one can pre-record a video message and then send it out to friends and family, almost like an email. Alternatively you can post it as an entry on your video blog. You can also create a video wall on a certain topic and people can upload videos of their opinion on the subject.
Most recently, UK-based Winkball has sent out reporters to South Africa to record the opinions of soccer fans on the ground. You might see a Winkball journalist walking around with a little recording devise and they might ask you who you are supporting, etc. These comments get posted onto the Winkball website, so that they can “communicate happiness”. They have already spoken to thousands of die-hard fans.
Here are some comments from fans found on the streets of Johannesburg about the match that was played between Brazil and Chile last night.
You can also make a video of yourself giving a match report of one of the games and become a “star reporter”. Winkball is giving away £1000.00 for the best match report every week.
Creative Consulting & Development Works is also very aware of the impact of videos, that is why we have been sharing videos with you in our blog posts since the start of the World Cup. If you missed any, click here, scroll down and enjoy.
