Interview w/Mike Hall (Questions Needed) (1 Viewer)

[David Dodds]

Our staff has selected some of the more influential people in the Fantasy Football space. Joe and I, with help from the message board, will interview approximately 20 people from now until the start of the fantasy season.

Here is how this will work.

We are going to solicit questions for 3 business days. The best of these questions will be forwarded to our interview candidate. When he answers them, this content will be posted as free material on the FBG website.

 

[varmint cong]

As with many unique and intriguing careers, I would love to know the path/journey, as well as the story and background, that lead to a career in fantasy football.

 

[David Dodds]

1. What new features are part of My Fantasy League in 2008?

2. Gives us your best sales pitch to why people should use My Fantasy League as their league manager? What separates you from your competition?

 

[Anthony Borbely]

I would like to know what we can expect going forward and if there are any unique or innovative features that could be a part of myfantasyleague.com in the future.

I'd also like to know if there are any plans to get involved in auctions.

 

[george]

1. Customer service/response is very timely. How many folks do you have on staff?

2. Are there any plans to expand the mfl brand? Such as $$$ leagues. I know a mock draft function/feature was being tested at one point. What is the status?

3. Any plans down the road to merge/buyout other hosting sites?

4. Love the "skins". Any plans to have a premium "custom web design" team to set up custom sites for leagues?

 

[Clayton Gray]

Bump.

 

[jwb]

I'm an entrepreneur, and like to see successful businesses like this. So like Varmint above, I'd also like to know more about the history of it - what did he do "before" MFL? What did he see that made him say "yea, this will be a good business model." How did the startup go? When did he know that it was going to work? That kinda thing.

 

[David Dodds]

Your first product, Fantasy Football League Manager (FFLM), was retired this year. Was that a sad day for you? FFLM had some outstanding reporting capabilities. Are there plans to incorporate them into My Fantasy League?

 

[Novice2]

Will advertisements be on everyones homepage in 2k9?

 

[Jeff Tefertiller]

Do you think there will be any legal issues in the future with using player names, ala baseball?

What do you see as the future of the league hosting industry? What have you incorporated into MFL that your competitors had first? I ask because most capitalists see something someone else is doing and think it would be a great fit.

What will the industry, especially MFL, look like in 2015?

 

[stugnut]

As feature laden as MFL is, the single most common criticism I hear about the MFL product is how unattractive and poorly laid out the league home pages are. Even the templates that are available have that, "My girlfriends nephew knows some CSS and he made it for me" look. Have you given any thought to hiring a design team to create a more professional and user friendly experience, one that would rival the look and feel of some of your competitors such as Fanball, ESPN and CBS Sportsline?

 

[Tanner9919]

If I'm paying for MFL, why do I have advertisements on every page? CBS does this, they have huge, annoying banners from GMC that expand to take up the entire homepage, upon login, it waits for 5 seconds, then shrinks down to 'normal' size.. I'm a paying customer, why must I be put through the scourge of advertising?!?! Have you thought about

charging an extra $10-$20 per league to have an advert-free MFL-based site?!

I'd gladly pay extra cash to be 100% advert free...

 

[QUEZILLA]

Any possibility of an iPhone application in the future?

 

[stugnut]

This question was asked in 2006 in the interview you did, I'd love to hear if any progress was made on it:

DD: We have a lot of people on our site that are huge fans of your product. Here are some of their questions. Is it possible for the MFL software to accept a file that is exported from The Draft Dominator software at the completion of a draft? Or possibly an excel or csv input file?MH: No, not currently. But we're making changes and additions all the time, so consider it added to our wish list for a future enhancement! Also, for those that want to cut and paste rosters from other programs or web pages, you can use the "Load Rosters" option on the For Commissioners Setup page. That's one way you can quickly import data from another source, in case that helps at all.

 

[vamphyri]

This question was asked in 2006 in the interview you did, I'd love to hear if any progress was made on it:

DD: We have a lot of people on our site that are huge fans of your product. Here are some of their questions. Is it possible for the MFL software to accept a file that is exported from The Draft Dominator software at the completion of a draft? Or possibly an excel or csv input file?MH: No, not currently. But we're making changes and additions all the time, so consider it added to our wish list for a future enhancement! Also, for those that want to cut and paste rosters from other programs or web pages, you can use the "Load Rosters" option on the For Commissioners Setup page. That's one way you can quickly import data from another source, in case that helps at all.

Was just going to post the same thing.

 

[Hoart Petterson]

Can you believe you're being interviewed?

 

[freshly_shorn]

Many hosters have gone back and forth on the free or pay strategy, with some doing both. Obviously, the aim is for FF hosts is to make some money. It seems that the stronger the 'brand', the more able the company is to offer their service free of charge. What will this do to the 'stand alone' hosting services like yours and your competitors that have to charge for it, when many large, branded hosters are offering comparable services for 'free' (understanding that advertising is a huge part of it)?

Do you see consolidation and/or the best-of-breed hosters being snapped up by big-brand-name content providers?

 

[SmallDawgsBITE]

Question :

Whose idea was it to make the site customizable, did you think at the time that would be the building block the MFL would be cemented on ?

 

[Qmaster]

I've asked this question as a "new features ticket" on MFL and I get the polite response "thank you for your request we will take a look at implementing this in the future"

My question is:

Why can't MFL add a simple "Notepad" feature that individual Owners can access from their own "My Team" page.

This feature seems to be simple enough to implement and can be very useful in keeping track of competitors favorite NFL Teams or Players and past trade offers...etc....

I searched the MFL message boards and find 5-6 requests for this feature, so please ask "da Boss" to get r done

Thanks!