It’s been almost a year since Beyond the Box, a revolutionary sports news app, released a major update to SportTechie. Well, Beyond the Box 2.4 has been released, and it has some fantastic new features.
When we last covered an update to Beyond the Box, it was only available on the iPad. Ten months later, Beyond the Box is on the iPhone, and is functioning well. The new platform transition seems to have gone well; and users are appreciating having another second-screen device for this app.
SportTechie has covered Beyond the Box since its creation, and Shailo Rao, the app’s Founder, has updated us with every development.
First and foremost, the home screen has been completely renovated. When the user opens the app on the iPhone, they will see sports tiles customized to each fan’s interest, complete with your favorite team and player photos. In addition, Beyond the Box has redesigned every page to be in sync with team logos and colors, creating a more seamless look to each page. Also, there is a full-screen option for users on the home screen and team pages, immersing fans even more into the app.
Following Instagram photos in the last update, Beyond the Box has implemented 15-second Instagram highlight videos. Beyond the Box has also added a share feature for all of their content, allowing users to send anything they like to their friends via SMS, iMessages, MMS, or social media. Lastly, Beyond the Box has provided links to every major NFL, NBA, and MLB site around, both general and team-specific. This feature allows users to transfer effortlessly right from the app to any major sports news site they want to visit.
In the interview below, we got the inside scoop from Shailo Rao himself on Beyond the Box 2.4.
SportTechie: It’s been almost a year since we last had an update from Beyond the Box. What new features are you rolling out in your 2.4 version?
Shailo Rao: One year ago, when you released that article, we were just on the iPad, and now we’re on the iPhone, so that’s been a big change. We’ve continued to update the content library to give people all the best content from the best sources about the Big 4 of U.S. Sports (MLB, NHL, NFL, NBA). Other updates; we now integrate videos from Instagram, and that’s been cool. It seems to me like videos on Instagram are more popular and common in basketball and the NBA, with other sports catching up to them, but that’s been a great content source that people have enjoyed. People are spending more time on the app because of that addition. We updated the home screen on the iPhone from earlier launches as well. We now have live tiles on the home screen, which give you a window into your sports interests, and those are powered through Instagram. You can see at a glance, when you first open up the app, what’s going on from all these different views.
We’ve also done an overall design refresh, creating a flatter design aesthetic, which is a little more modern. The web browsers for each team now have the same colors as the team, so it really feels like you’re still in that team experience when you jump off and navigate the web. Part of the design refresh really focused on the content in the experience, so you see the navigation and UI elements hide when you go onto the screen. That’s been a great way to give people a more immersive reading experience.
We’ve added more sharing features so that you can share through messaging on your iPhone and through iMessages. So, if you instantly see a cool photo, video, or link on Beyond the Box, you can instantly share it with people.
It’s not really about Beyond the Box; it’s about the content that we give you about your sports interests. Beyond the Box is there for you on your iPhone and iPad, but when you get into Beyond the Box, we are a great jumping off point into everything you need to know about your favorite sports teams and players. We’re also expanding over time and adding a sports portal row. For starters, we have all of the best NBA sites, and select MLB and NHL sites. It’s a quick, one-touch access point to the best content websites that are covering your favorite teams. We have instant links to all the best team websites, and that’s critical because it’s hard, in Safari, to type in all these different sites you want to visit. We removed that by providing one-touch access to all these great sites.
SportTechie: How has the transition been going with transferring Beyond the Box to the iPhone platform in addition to your iPad and iPad mini ones?
Shailo Rao: When we first started out, we were majorly focused on the second-screen experience and the tablet landscape. We saw that over 60% of our users, when we were iPad and iPad mini only, used our app while they watched the game. We thought hey, this is a great starting point, but we need to get this into people’s hands beyond just their living room, which is why we brought it to iPhone, and eventually will bring it to Android. Over the past year, there’s obviously been more iPhones out there, so it’s been easier to get the word out and get people to check out the app. People use the app more frequently with the iPhone.
Additionally, fans are all about getting quick updates from their teams throughout the day, and because we are pulling this stuff off of Twitter and Instagram, we have the right match. It’s not just an article, which you don’t always have time to read when you are walking to the bus or train station, or in between a class, it’s just a quick update. The Twitter-Instagram interface has been an ideal match for that, because people are constantly checking on their teams multiple times a day.
Beyond the Box is about giving you all the content in one place, and not just any content, but only the high-quality stuff. We have the best sources, but also the right amount of the content. Fan stuff can be good, but we are really about using the high-quality sources that produce good content. We look at the different types of data that are coming in from Twitter as well, and we make sure that we aren’t going to use unnecessary stuff. When you’re watching a game, and it’s a commercial, you only have about 90 seconds. We can’t give you millions of tweets; we have to give you a good amount of the best stuff.
SportTechie: What gave you the idea to have the 15-second highlight videos incorporated into your app? Any push from the popularity of Vine and Instagram videos?
Shailo Rao: It was a combination of two things. We did a content analysis, looking at the immergence of video content on Instagram for sports and the popularity of it. We saw this and knew that it going to be a continuing trend. This is very similar to the bet that we made with Instagram last spring in 2013. In the spring of 2013, a lot of sports teams were just starting to get Instagram accounts, and a lot of them didn’t have them yet. All of a sudden, when they made them, they were posting three to four times a day, and we saw this as a growing trend. We knew that this was going to continue to grow into a very valuable way for all sports teams and other brands to engage with their audience. We saw that as an emerging data source, so we took a bet on it, and it paid off. The photos have consistently been there throughout the year; teams have done a remarkable job; leagues have done a remarkable job producing very cool and stylish photos on Instagram.
We are taking that same type of bet with videos, and we are starting to see that come, but I think that spike hasn’t hit quite yet. I believe we are going to continue to see more and more cool, 15-second sports videos on Instagram, and that will help us to keep our content coming from one place, which is great for us.
Vine and YouTube are definite data sources we are looking into to get more fun content about people’s sports interests. Vine and Instagram videos are short, with Vine being about six seconds long and Instagram being about 15 seconds long; those short clips are perfect for sports. A sports highlight on SportsCenter is very short; it’s a bunch of quick five to ten second clips of someone dunking or a touchdown. These short clips are perfectly suited for this medium. Sports is very lucky to have outlets such as Vine and Instagram, because their length fits perfectly into our distribution medium.
SportTechie: It seems like a majority of this update was tailored towards individual fan customization, with the brand new homepages and design refreshes. Was that Beyond the Box’s intention?
Shailo Rao: I think the themes for this most recent update were to make the app more visual, and that’s where the new home screen comes into play. We really wanted to enhance the visual aspect of it in order to create a better content experience. When you’re in Beyond the Box, it’s about you interacting with your team. The team color waves and the interest browser also build onto that aspect. We really want Beyond the Box to be in the background, and for the focus to be on the content of your interests. When you come to Beyond the Box, it’s all about your interests.
SportTechie: So, what’s next in Beyond the Box 3.0?
Shailo Rao: We have plans to get fans engaged in maintaining the quality of the app.
What we are focused on next is using Beyond the Box to help you connect with friends who share your passion. Today, Beyond the Box helps you explore your sports interests, but in the next version, it’s going to be a place where you can explore your sports interests in depth, but also a place where you can connect with other friends who share your passion.
Beyond the Box is a place where you can go for great content, but it’s also going to become a place where you can go to share content with those friends and connect with them through the app. Beyond the Box is going to become more of a communication medium, giving you a chance to connect with your buddies and share your sports interests.
As Beyond the Box continues to push deeper into the sports news world, we are excited to continue watching it develop.
You can download Beyond the Box 2.4 for iPhone + iPad + iPad Mini on the App Store here.