It’s a Slam Dunk

Planet Orange, the NBA’s Phoenix Suns’ online community, officially went live today.

iStreamPlanet developed the site and as part of the deployment, iStreamPlanet created a video player using Microsoft’s Silverlight technology. We’ve now integrated Silverlight into the KickApps platform, so our clients can now choose from Flash or Silverlight videos for their sites and we also support Quicktime for Safari and the iPhone.

As we’ve talked about before on this blog, sports teams and leagues can and do benefit a great deal from social media and online communities. Fans gather in stadiums, arenas, sports bars, living rooms and online to share their. Using social media, teams can facilitate a highly interactive place for their fans to gather with other fans and express their love for their favorite team(s), thus driving a deeper affinity with the team and brand. This extends the reach beyond a given game, season and venue. Further, it provides teams and leagues with a unique way to keep in touch with their fans online and offline, through multiple channels, and opens the doors for revenue opportunities.

If you’re a fan of the Phoenix Suns and the NBA pop into Planet Orange and become a citizen. (I myself am a James Worthy era Lakers man, so as much as I love the fact that KickApps is powering Planet Orange…I’ll hold out for Lakers to come onboard and actually start winning again.)

UPDATE: Check out Mashable’s blog about this. Good analysis for what this means for the Sun’s and their fans.