With the league games almost over, FIFA World Cup 2014 becomes exciting from here on. Football fans are eagerly waiting for the top 16 teams to battle ahead in the knock out round. While fans are busy cheering for their favourite team, brands and startups are looking for interesting ways to engage with fans and cash in on the momentum.
We saw how TCS is leveraging its Social Soccer App and KRDS is using Twitter data to provide interesting visualizations. Now we have a startup Pugmarks that has recently launched a mobile app that curates all the world cup related stories as you browse the internet.
You may be wondering why one more curation app that talks about Football?
To answer your query – Kicks works at the background and as you crawl the internet and social networks, the app pops up with a Football icon when it sees relevant resources about the ongoing world cup. The app integrates with apps like Facebook, Twitter and allows you to add the relevant content to the app magazine. A smart app that works on your internet behavior rather than telling you what you should consume.
However, for Kicks to work you will have to give access to the apps that you use. The app guides you to do so or you can do it by tapping on Settings and provide accessibility to Kicks.
Being a football lover, I was excited to give the app a try so I downloaded the Android version. The app fires up with a Facebook login. The below screen grab is an instance of the Home screen.
Tap on any player or team or coach you would get all the associated content. Just flip over and you can find the content. If you are not happy with the synopsis you can tap on the article and that leads to the original site from where the content has been sourced. The below screen grab gives you a preview of content on the app.
The interesting bit however, as I mentioned earlier, is how the football icon surfaces while you browse the internet. The ball pops up as it finds any football related content, once you tap on, the app shows some vital information and the relevant content is added. There after the app shows all the related content with regards to the player or team. The smart feature is shown in the below screen grab:
Besides you can share the magazine with your Facebook friends.
Kicks is a simple app and it is meant for people who are passionate about the game and want to enrich their knowledge by consuming more content on the same. The smart feature of the app that populates on your browsing behavior is the primary reason why I have liked the app.
The app had no glitches and the experience was smooth on my Android mobile device.
Give it a try if you love the game and want to know what the world is reporting about the games. And if you are really bored then you can kick the ball, works as a great stress buster.
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