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Go-RedSox.com
Boston.com just struck a content-sharing deal with Daigo Fujiwara's bilingual site about Japanese baseball players in the U.S. |
Lately the Japanese have gotten pretty interested in the Boston Red Sox, since the team started negotiations to sign Japanese superstar ball player
Daisuke Matsuzaka to a six-year, $52 million deal.
On Dec. 28, Boston.com announced a content-sharing agreement with Go-RedSox.com, a Japanese-language baseball blog. "Under the agreement, excerpts of Major League Baseball coverage from The Boston Globe, Boston.com and the Boston Dirt Dogs fan site will be translated and posted on Go-RedSox.com for Japanese-language readers worldwide. The new relationship begins immediately, with links between both sites."
Go-RedSox.com is the project of Daigo Fujiwara, a Japanese-born journalist and designer at the Boston Globe. Fujiwara also runs the site Japanese Ball Players, where he covers Japanese baseball players in the U.S., in both English and Japanese. This site became high-profile during the Matsuzaka-Red Sox negotiations.
I learned about all this yesterday, when my colleague Gil Asakawa e-mailed me. Asakawa, who is a friend of Fujiwara, wrote that the content-sharing agreement is "pretty cool, because Daigo's a determined fan who created his site out of passion and a need for fans in Japan to track their heroes' adventures in America. Daigo finds this all quite amusing (and exciting)."
Personally, I'm curious whether advertisers will find ways to relate more directly to targeted international online communities such as this.
More coverage via Google News. Also, Asakawa covered the deal at his blog Nikkei View.
