What’s better than a social network? A social network dedicated to a specific interest, where you can socialize to your heart’s content and then some, around something you just love.

What is it that we love as individuals as well as a nation? If you were thinking political scandals and vain gossiping, you’re very close but not quite there. We all love cricket of course!! Cricket is one thing that can still rally the Pakistani crowds in a positive way.

A couple of years ago a group of tech-savvy and cricket loving Pakistanis set out to put two and two together, i.e. social networking and cricket. They recently brought us ‘Cricout’. If you haven’t heard about it yet, you will be hearing about it very soon, starting from this post. So, what is there to know about Cricout? Let’s talk about the two primary questions: What is it? What’s in it for me?

What is Cricout?

cricout.com

Who better to tell us about Cricout than the man behind it, Owais Anjum, the Founder and CEO.

“Cricout is a social networking app for cricket that creates a meeting point for friends, fans and experts.”

What this means is that cricket lovers at all levels, from part-time lovers to full-blown Romeos, can talk and share about the game from all angles possible, whenever, wherever and with whomever they wish. It has been released as a web version cricout.com and an iPhone app.

What can I do with it?

There are many cricket websites around, which provide all kinds of information so let’s see what Cricout has to offer that makes it stand out among the crowd.

Invite Friends: Since cricout is a “social’ app, the first thing to mention is that you can hookup with all of the people in your existing networks right away. It gives you the ability to invite your friends from Facebook, when you login via your Facebook account. I would like to suggest here that Cricout team should think about integrating LinkedIn as well. It may seem like a boring network but really has a lot of lively people.

Live Commentary: My first memories of cricket fever include a pocket radio stuck to one of my ears totally immersed in the running commentary. This means that live commentary is a must for any cricket platform. Cricout goes a few steps further, it gives you:

• Live, ball-by-ball commentary;
• An opportunity to follow the commentators and even interact with them;
• And most of all “share” with your friends (in different geographical locations) in real-time and shout and scream and let it all out like you do sitting in front of TV with your buddies.

“It is a distinctive ball-by-ball commentary empowering fans to interact with each other by attaching emotions (likes, dislikes etc), comments, pictures and expert analysis…” said, Owais Anjum.

Picture Sharing: If you are a man of few words (like me), don’t despair, you can still join the party and share all the fun with picture (worth a 1000 words, hun?!) sharing. You can share live pics from the stadium or some from your collection of cricket photographs.

Interactive Newsfeed: Now, you don’t have to visit separate sites to stay up-to-date on the latest happenings in the world of cricket. Get the latest news, expert comments and rants from your Facebook friend through Cricout’s interactive and customizable newsfeed.

Push Notifications: No matter how much you love cricket, there may be times when you become busy with something else of importance (may be not as much) like work, and forget about an important match. Cricout doesn’t leave you high and dry here either. It will remind you of important matches that you want to follow and will notify you at start time and then periodically throughout the game.

Who is excited about Cricout?

The biggest vote of confidence is perhaps the venture capital ($85,000) that has been raised for this idea from the finicky investors in the Silicon Valley. You know, if savvy investors are willing to put their money on the line for this, it must be some idea.

The other sign of its potential is the stats from Apple App Store; it has gained the number one spot in Pakistan and a very respectable fourth spot in India in the sports category.  In addition to this, it has been listed as a ‘featured app’ in 10 countries including cricket loving nations like Pakistan, Sri Lanka, India and UAE.