SI Fantasy Football app debuts on Facebook

In May, Sports Illustrated and Kabam (formerly known as Watercooler) announced that they were bringing one of the most popular real-life social games to Facebook -- fantasy football. Now, right before the 2010 football season kicks off, SI Fantasy Football arrives on Facebook.

Much like the other fantasy football apps/sites out there, SI Fantasy Football lets you join or create a league, set up a draft, keep track of your players' scores in real-time and rap with other armchair quarterbacks in a chat area and on message boards. The big differentiator with this app is that it lives on Facebook, which means you can invite Facebook friends to join your league with a few clicks of the mouse (you also have the option to invite friends via email). Then there's the real strength of this app -- the ability to post trash talk directly to your Facebook wall.


SI fantasy football

Since this is a Sports Illustrated branded app, it naturally incorporates news and tips from SI's editorial staff, along with fantasy football analysis from Rotowire.com. You can also download the Fantasy Football Draft Kit from SI.com/FantasyFootball, which includes top 100 player profiles, key position rankings and mock drafts.

When SI Fantasy Football was initially announced, there was brief mention of a FanZone feature that "will reward players for amassing large fan bases to cheer for their fantasy teams." It doesn't look like this feature made it into the launch version of the app, and there's no indication whether FanZone was sidelined or will be incorporated at a later date.


At the time of this post -- the 'invite friends' function seemed to have some trouble loading, so hopefully they'll get the kinks worked out before football fans rush to check out SI Fantasy Football. Stability will be the key for an fantasy football app like this to compete with Yahoo, ESPN and the other more robust fantasy football applications that have been the go-to for more than a decade.

Check out SI Fantasy Football on Facebook now >