Facebook Acquires SportStream To Increase Sports Chatter By Providing News Outlets With Cleaner Data

Facebook wants more users talking about sports on it instead of Twitter, so today it announced the acquisition of SportStream, a startup that analyzes social media mentions of sports and provides clean data access to news outlets and teams. The idea is by getting more Facebook sports chatter data on TV and digital news, more people will choose it as their athletics watercooler.

Last month I detailed how Facebook had chosen SportStream as an API partner with deep access to its data. As I explained, when people post about sports “The problem is jumbled data. When you write “RG3 touchdown” you mean Robert Griffin the third scored a touchdown for the Washington Redskins NFL football team. Facebook can’t parse that, but SportStream can. By making its sports data easier to understand, Facebook might get more outlets and teams to use it. Facebook hopes the perception that it’s a home for real-time event chatter will trickle down to users.”

Terms of the acquisition weren’t disclosed, but it sounds like SportStream will continue its work with the fifty plus teams and news outlets it already provides data to.