Follow Super Bowl Related Tweets With GameJabs

My annual Super Bowl party was partially hijacked a couple of years ago when the Colts won. A friend of mine, who happens to be a huge Colts fan except when the Cowboys are on (he’s also a lemming), decided after the AFC Championship game to have his own Super Bowl party and hijack half my guests. I haven’t spoken to him since other than text messages that read something like, “Nice move, Pac Man. You guys sure do know how to pick ’em.”

Until this year, I’ve refused to pick up Twitter during the game. I’m a sports nut. Even worked in sports for 11 years. I like to watch the game, listen to the commentators and take in the conversation with my friends watching with me. But one of those friends — ironically enough in attendance at my Super Bowl party last year — has created something that piqued my interest.

Rob May‘s GameJabs makes its mainstream debut Sunday. Though the service is still in an almost pre-beta stage of development, it will aggregate Super Bowl-related Twitter messages using hashtags with exclamation points instead of the “#.” Interested folks can contribute to the GameJabs stream for the game (!SuperBowl), teams (!Steelers or !Cardinals), players (!Roethlisberger) or, yes, the commercials (!SuperAds). When someone Twitters using the tags, they are pulled into a stream with everyone else’s, connecting you to others watching the same game for who might be fans of the same team or player.

The site goes into full swing in a few weeks with a full NCAA basketball set-up. In about 10 days or so, you’ll be able to officially login using your Twitter login (it presently just makes GameJabs follow you and does nothing more) and customize your favorite team and player streams. It has the potential to become the Twittering sports fan’s first stop on the web.

So Sunday evening as I settle down to root for the Steelers, the only professional football team I’ve ever been a fan of, I may just sneak in some Tweets. In addition to the text messages to my friend that will include, “Have the Colts scored yet?” “Which team’s bandwagon have you mindlessly jumped on for this game? I want to know who to bet against,” and, of course, “We’re out of dip. Can you pick some up on your way … oh, wait. I didn’t invite you. Nevermind.”