Nice.  Our Infinite sports sites have reached four thousand registered players today.  Not bad at all considering we're a home grown shop, self-funded, self-developed...  The last six months or so has been very good for us.  The player registrations and page views are at all time high.  We've even added a site for finding and scheduling pick-up hockey games -- InfiniteHockey.com.

We've also had some great press from a number of sites including the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Toronto's GlobeAndMail.com and the technology blogosphere's ReadWriteWeb.com and more.  Check out our press page!

So who was player number four thousand?  A soccer baller from Santa Cruz, CA.  Invite your friends everybody.  Let's go 5000!

"In this post we look at another mainstream basketball site, but this time a small niche site created by someone with a passion for the sport - InfiniteHoops.com.  InfiniteHoops.com has a very simple purpose: to enable people to find and schedule pick-up games of basketball."

-- Richard MacManus, ReadWriteWeb

InfiniteHoops was featured in a post on ReadWriteWeb today, which I think is fantastic.  ReadWriteWeb is a blog that covers web technology news, reviews and analysis.  Thanks for the great post, Richard!

"Bring your game to your social graph."

Tonight we're turning on the beta of our Facebook application.  If you use Facebook, you can publish your InfiniteSoccer game status to your news and mini-feeds so your friends know when you can play and you can recruit them to your game.  Your Facebook profile will show your next game details.

All of this is experimental so let us know your feedback.  I'd love to hear what you like and don't like.

What a day.  First I wake up to seeing InfiniteHoops mentioned in Mashable.com, and now the Seattle PI venture reporter, John Cook, has included InfiniteHoops in a post on his Venture Blog on Seattle sports startups.  Have a read.

Quote: Tosh Meston, who runs the InfiniteHoops site, where basketball players can find local pick up games ... created InfiniteHoops because he and his friends simply wanted an easy way to know who would be showing up for games. The site now has about 3,000 members and 600 groups.

The social networking news site Mashable.com has given our site InfiniteHoops a mention.  Check it out.

Quote:  InfiniteHoops.com - If all this basketball talk this time of year gives you an urge to go out and play some yourself, InfiniteHoops can help you set up a pick-up game in your area quickly.

Today we launch InfiniteHockey.com, a new social sports network designed to connect people to play the sport of hockey.  If you have a regular game and are looking for players, schedule it with us so players can find it.

The release of InfiniteHockey coincides with some new features in the software that powers each of our sports websites.  


ICalendar Subscriptions

For each group, you can now subscribe to the iCal feed of the upcoming games scheduled by our system.  When looking at a group page, you will see a "Subscribe Calendar" link in the left side menu and calendar icon in the top right corner of the group details block.  If you use a calendaring application like Microsoft Outlook or Apple iCal and you click on this link, you will be subscribed to the game calendar.  Updates will be automatically pulled into your calendaring app so you'll always be up to date.

Social Bookmarking

If you use a social bookmarking service like Delicious, Digg, Faves etc., and you like one of our news items, you can click the "Fave It!" or "Bookmark" buttons and save them to your social bookmarking service.

Display Preferences

By default, we show your next two upcoming games on the main page, but if you play more frequently and want to see additional games, you change it under Preferences / Display Preferences.

http://InfiniteHockey.com

InfiniteHoops was mentioned on Seattlest.com as one of their best technology picks of 2007.  Awesome!

Quote: Seattlest emailed a bunch of local tech professionals and asked them for the best of the Seattle tech scene in 2007. They responded and we threw all their suggestions in a list, looked it over, and scrapped 90% of them and then made up a new list off the top of our heads.
...
8. Infinite Hoops
If there's a theme to the rest of the list it's that the best technology out of Seattle this year really shines when it's facilitating real-world contact. InfiniteHoops.com helps you find pick-up games in your area.

InfiniteHoops is mentioned in an article on sports social networking sites.  This is our first press!

Quote: Major League Soccer is coming to Seattle in 2009.
Sources confirmed on Friday that the long-rumored announcement of an expansion franchise for the city will come early next week.

Awesome news for Sounder fans and Seattle area soccer players too.

Quote: This is the Seattle Startups Index* (SSI) for the month of November which reached the incredible level of 210 startups on the list. Is Seattle a great place for startups or what?

This month marks the debut of InfiniteHoops on the Seattle Startup Index, which is a ranking of startups in the Seattle area by their Alexa and Compete scores.  While InfiniteHoops has a long way to go to compete with companies like Zillow and iLike, we're happy to make a showing on the list at #158.  Woot!

We released a new version of the service on Friday.  This one adds a new navigation bar, a groups directory and basic threaded messaging.

Thanks for using the site.  Let us know if you have feature requests or see bugs.

Thanks,
Tosh Meston

Hey Everybody,
This week we launched the all new InfiniteSoccer.com.  It is a release we are really excited about and hope you will like it too.  

The new stuff includes:

- All new design of the pages.
- Player profiles.
- Latest Updates Block - a place where you can see at a glance what players in your groups are doing.  See when they mark themselves In for a game, when they update their profiles, when they comment...
- Google Maps of games and groups locations.
- Improved city search for upcoming games and groups.

Thanks to all of you who've emailed your appreciation and feedback.  Enjoy the site.  Let you friends know about us.

Thanks,
Tosh Meston

It's time for us to thank the users of our pick up sports sites - InfiniteHoops.com, InfiniteSoccer.com and InfiniteSoftball.com - and the sponsors who make the site possible.  We're lucky to have a great online community here.  Check out our sponsors' sites, everybody.

BBallCentral.com (http://BBallCentral.com)
TicketNetwork.com (http://TicketNetwork.com)
Ticket Liquidator (http://TicketLiquidator.com)
GoTickets.com (http://GoTickets.com)
WorldTicketShop.com (http://WorldTicketShop.com)
BestShowTicketsLasVegas.com (http://BestShowTicketsLasVegas.com)
SoldOutEventTickets.com (http://SoldOutEventTickets.com)
1st4 Football Tickets (http://1st4FootballTickets.com)
Coast To Coast Tickets (http://CoastToCoastTickets.com)
LondonTicketShop.co.uk (http://LondonTicketShop.co.uk)
London Ticket Market (http://LondonTicketMarket.com)
TicketTout.com (http://TicketTout.com)
TicketsToGo.com (http://TicketsToGo.com)
Razor Gator (http://RazorGator.com)
OnlineSeats.com (http://OnlineSeats.com)
Ticket Specialists (http://TicketSpecialists.com)
Chicago Gigs (http://ChicagoGigs.com).

We are very pleased to announce the social networking service that powers the pick-up sports community of InfiniteHoops.com, InfiniteSoccer.com and InfiniteSoftball.com has reached its 2000th registered player.  At the same time we have also reached 200 pick-up sports groups across the US, UK, Canada, Australia and Singapore.  

Who was the number 2000?  A basketballer from New Jersey.  

Invite your friends, everybody!

All right! We've passed our 1900th registered users of our Infinite sports network.  Who was number 1900?  A footballer from Delaware.  Fantastic!  Let's go 2000!