UPDATE: Jan. 24 at 11:15 p.m.

The Carrier Dome is the first stadium in the country to integrate Foursquare into the fan experience with the installation of video boards around the upper stands of the stadium.

A control panel automatically compiles profile photos from Foursquare check-ins so they can be displayed on the screens. It does the same thing with tweets, compiling a list of all of the content that uses the hashtag #OrangeNation, along with game-specific hashtags such as #beatthebearcats, said Jeffrey Rubin, School of Information Studies professor and CEO and president of Sidearm Sports, who operates the boards.

While not every tweet will show up on the boards, every person who checks in on Foursquare will see their photo. The board holds up to 120 photos at a time, cycling through sets of 10. When a new person checks in, it will kick the earliest people off of the board, Rubin said.

The program automatically filters out tweets containing profanity while risqué Twitter handles and profile pictures have to be filtered out manually by a Sidearm Sports employee during the game. This same employee also chooses which specific tweets will be displayed, Rubin said.

“The Carrier Dome is an old structure built in the 1980s, so any way to bring new technology to the fans is a good thing,” Rubin said. “Fans have the choice of paying the monthly cable bill (to watch games) versus 100 dollars on tickets, parking, concessions, etc., and you are going to have a handful of people who will choose to stay home.”

The ribbon board, installed during the summer by Daktronics, provides 4,445-square feet of LED real estate that now line the upper stands of the Dome. With the success of the Twitter integration during football season, including Foursquare was a natural progression, Rubin said.

Sidearm Sports worked with Foursquare employee Jonathan Crowley to develop software — called the social presentation control panel — to manage what appears on the boards, Rubin said.

The software from Sidearm Sports works in conjunction with the Show Control software suite provided by Daktronics, said Thomas Westman, project manager for the board installation.

Although it was first implemented during the men’s basketball game Dec. 29, the game against Cincinnati on Jan. 21 was the first game in which students back on campus got to enjoy this new feature, Rubin said.

With the new boards, check-in numbers have been on the rise with 120 check-ins at the first game and 286 at the game against Cincinnati, Rubin said.

Rubin also brought up the advertising opportunities that come with the new social media integration.

“Right now, when you go to the games, you see the Toyota logo or [Pomco] Kiss Cam. Now think of a logo displayed right next to people’s Foursquare check-ins,” Rubin said.  “The sponsorship value of traditional advertising versus integrated advertising is huge.  Sponsors will love it – people [will be] taking photos of their faces and tweets on the boards.”

Crowley, the Foursquare employee who worked with Sidearm sports to develop the software, also said advertising held great opportunities.

“When you walk into the Dome, you are bombarded with ads everywhere and you start to tune that out,” he said.

The number of Foursquare check-ins has roughly tripled since the new Foursquare integration, Crowley said.  “Whats fun is that you can see who’s here even if they’re not sitting in the same section.”

Right now, the development team is focused on getting more access to information about Foursquare users in order to find more creative ways to display it on the boards, Rubin said.

“For example, how many times each individual has checked in to the Dome. Then we could display things like the ‘gold club’ and ‘platinum club’ (for the highest number of check-ins),” Rubin said.

Rubin said Sidearm Sports has also been working on integrating Instagram, which will likely debut at the next game.

Billy Ceskavich, a junior information management and technology major, said he was ambivalent about his picture showing up on the boards at the Cincinnati game, but felt that others would enjoy having their photos displayed.

Said Ceskavich: “I think people who use Foursquare use it to stand out in a crowd or to be recognized for being somewhere and the new board helps people to do that.”

Published on January 22, 2013 at 11:47 pm

Contact Jackie: jbarr@syr.edu