The Sports Info Business

It is half way through the baseball season and while some players get a thee day break to heal, spend time with family or just hang out, the best in Major League Baseball will gather in St. Louis tomorrow night for the 2009 MLB All-Star game.   Home to the St. Louis Cardinals, the Major League Baseball Mid-Summer Classic gets under way.  For fans of the Cardinals and for those that live in the mid-west, it has been a few years since the all-stars gathered at Busch Stadium.  It was so long ago, according to the record books, I was learning how to walk and talk.  The last time the all star game was played at Busch Stadium Lyndon Johnson was president, USSR launched Luna 10, which would become the first space probe to orbit the moon and Woodstock was still three years away from happening.

Fox Sports, who owns the broadcasting rights, produced this commercial, highlighting the Arch in St. Louis as the background for branding the city of St. Louis.

Last year Josh Hamilton created a buzz during the home run contest by hitting just about everything out of the park.  It was the first time in a few years, I have to admit, that I paid attention to the game.

For those of you who care about the 2009 MLB All-Star game in St. Louis for facts other than it provides home field advantage during the world series, here are a few more tidbits:

** This is the third time int he last four years the game has been played in a national League Stadium.

** It has been a while since the National League won the All-Star game.  1996 to be exact, a 6-0 whitewash at Veterans Stadium.

** The Los Angeles Angles will host the 2011 game

** The Arizona Diamondbacks get their first opportunity with the 2011 game.

Here is a list of the all-stars selected to play this year.

As a resource, here is a link to to the rosters supplied by major league baseball and a hot link to each individual player.

In a related story to the all-star game, the New York Times on Monday published a story, All-Star Sponsors Strive to Look Truly Charitable. St. Louis, has been on a kick to make this year’s game truly different from past efforts.

Friday is technology time and I thought this week we would look at the top Social Media networking sites by rank.  Sure everyone probably knows in overall website traffic Google is number one in the world, but where do you think MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and Digg rank?  While not social media sites, Yahoo is number two. and YouTube (considered social media?) is #3,  Want to know more?  read on…..Instead of using this site’s claims, we turn to www.alexa.com for their over site rankings lists.  In order of social media, here are the current rankings by popularity.

Please note the links are not to the sites themselves but to the Alexa stats on each site….

Here we go.

No. 4   facebook  The site was ranked number five three months ago.  Users spend more than 25 minutes per visit on the site and 268,000+ link to it.

No. 8 Blogger.com   Has been online since July 31st, 2000, though users spend much less time on the site than no. 4  

No. 9  MySpace  Down from No. 2 three months ago.  Media reports more than 200 million users around the world.  Alexa says 68%+ users come from the United States.

No. 12 Word Press — Yet another site that enables millions to blog.  

No. 33 Flickr  The five year old company specializes in online photo sharing.  Visitors average a little less than five minutes per day on the site.

No. 50 Twitter:  If you read this site you know I am a fan of Twitter and the micro-blogging site’s rise has been nothing short of amazing.  Consider this according to Alexa.  Three months ago, it was ranked #441.  Users spend nearly 10 minutes a day on the site and less than half of all users call the U.S. home. 

No. 94  LinkedIn.  The professional networking site has just 55,771 links to it (several more than this site! :>) but am a bit shocked.  Based on the economy and people’s need to network and locate job listings, I would have guessed higher.  I use this site and I think it is very valuable.

If you would like to see Alexa’s Top 100 sites for the U.S. only, then here is a different link.    Some sites that rank in the Top 100 here but not in the world include Blogspot (No. 55) Digg (82), Yelp (84)

Just for the heck of it, I wanted to check out Top U.S. Sites when it came to sports related subjects as well.  Here is what Alexa says

No. 18 ESPN

No. 63 cbssports.com

No. 70 Fox Sports

No. 81 Major League Baseball (MLB.com)

No. 96 NBA (NBA.com)