A professional athlete is defined as one whose primary source of income is tied to his/her direct participation playing a professional sport. The athlete is no longer restricted as an amateur athlete, which requires participation without remuneration.

Our goal is to utilize the dashboard to help promote all of our athletes to the fans. Right now, we do this manually and try to make sure that every athlete gets featured on a regular basis.

However, if you are an athlete with something special coming up or some news you think is especially interesting to share with all the members, please contact us at marketing@fanfuego.com and we will be happy to consider posting it as soon as possible.

Thanks!

Sincerely,

The FanFuego Staff

At FanFuego, we have integrated Twitter onto our site for you to send status update to your profile.

To set up your phone for mobile status updating, please following these steps:

1. Goto www.twitter.com and open a new account.
2. Once you have opened an account, go into "settings" and select the "devices" tab.
3. Add your mobile phone number and receive a code.
4. Send that code to 40404 to confirm your code.  You will receive a confirmation.  Make sure to now save 40404 as "FanFuego" in your address list.
5. On FanFuego, log in and click "edit profile" in the upper right hand corner. Click the "settings" tab and scroll to the bottom to see the following:
6. Enter your Twitter username and password and hit save.  If it saves, you are all set!

From this point on, you can use your mobile phone to update your status!

Congrats!

Thanks!

The FanFuego Staff

Bugs...

Can't live with them...can't make the site better without them!

We're truly sorry that you are having problems with the site. If you keep hitting a wall either physically or virtually, please let us know immediately. In order to make the experience better for everyone, we want to address bugs as soon as possible.

If you find a problem, please e-mail notify@FanFuego.com immediately and include the following:

1. Your username
2. The browser type you are using (Firebox, IE6, IE7)
3. Operating System (XP, Opera, UNIX, etc.)
4. Either the specific page (by cutting and pasting the actual URL into the e-mail) or explain where you were when the issue happened.
5. What steps did it take to create the problem?
6. What error message(s) came up when it happened?
7. What should have it been doing in an ideal world?
8. Any other comments or concerns you think will help us solve your problem.

Our goal is to get major bugs fixed within 24 hours of submission.

Thank you!

We love to hear that sentence!

It's because we believe our growth is based on the ability of our athletes, fans and users to provide valuable new concepts that will make FanFuego.com an even better experience each time you visit.

If you have a question, comment, issue or suggestion to make the site better, we want to know...and know now!

We will be the first ones to tell you that we're not perfect and we need your help!

Just e-mail us at feedback@FanFuego.com with whatever is on your mind!

Thanks!

The FanFuego Staff

We're glad you asked!

There are a lot of ways to connect with professional athletes on FanFuego.

1. Become their fan! Just go to an athlete profile and click on the "become a fan" button. When you do that, you'll get regular updates of their activity on your "MY HOME" network activity page.
2. Write a message on their whiteboard! They'll see it and maybe even respond back on yours!
3. Upload photo, videos or news stories that are "tagged" with the athlete's name. Athletes don't always have time to upload relevant info about themselves. They love it when fans help build their page by uploading content on their behalf!
4. Add a question in the athlete's forum. These questions can be answered by the athlete or other fans! It's a great environment in which to talk, discuss and appreciate your athlete even more!
5. Buy stuff from them! In the near future, every athlete will be getting their own e-commerce store where they'll be able to sell stuff to their fans. Once that is available, maybe there will be something for you.

If you find other ways to connect with athletes, please let us know at feedback@FanFuego.com!

Thanks!

The FanFuego Staff

The easiest way to find someone or something is use the search box located in the upper right hand corner of the web site. Enter a word or portion of a word and the FanFuego search engine will bring up anything related to it.

The next easiest way is to use our cascade management structure to find what you need to find. By clicking on the SPORTS tab on the navigation bar, you can select lower levels based on your interest all the way down to a specific FanFuego athlete. Along the way, we think you'll be able to find what you need with relative ease.

Finally, the next easiest way is to follow your friend network to see where that takes you. We know that your friends may have similar interests to you and by exploring their profile page and the connections they've made; you might just find what you need.

If none of these options worked for you, please let us know at notify@FanFuego.com. We're always looking for new ways to help you find what you need as quickly as possible!

Sincerely,

The FanFuego Staff

You will need to sign up as a  "Passionate Fan".

After you submit your application, you will need to check your email inbox to verify your email. To verify your email, click on the link that we send in your signup confirmation email.

Upon email verification, we will approve your account, and you can then log in and begin to update your site.

I hope this helps!

Changing your password is quite easy.

First, you put your right foot in, then you pull the right foot out...wait. Sorry.

Actually, all you need to do is log in, go to the “Edit Account” section and select the "Settings" tab.

This is where you can enter your new password. You'll need to re-enter it so that you make "doubly" sure you wrote it right the first time.

We hope that helps!

Sincerely,

The FanFuego Staff

Aw man....apparently you weren't that into us?

Well, we're gonna miss you, but we understand (not really, but legally, we don't have anything to blackmail you with, so we'll just let you go...) and the process is really simple.

To delete your account, please send an e-mail to us at notify@FanFuego.com and we'll delete your account as soon as possible.

And don't worry, when we see you on the street next time, we'll still say hi.  It's all good.

Sincerely,

The FanFuego Staff

I hope you can!

It should be relatively easy to connect with your friends on FanFuego.  All you need to do is use the search button on the upper right hand side of the account to type in their entire name or at least a portion.

If they are online, their profile should show up in the search results.

Click on "add as friend" and that'll start the process.

Your friend will then see your request via an e-mail and can accept your request when they log on next.

Voila!  Now you are friends!

We hope that helps!

If not, let us know at notify@FanFuego.com and we'll see how we can help!

Thanks!

The FanFuego Staff

FanFuego is RSS Feed "Friendly". We accept both RSS 2.0 and Atom Feeds...if that makes sense.

A RSS Feed is a web feed format that is used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines, and podcasts in a standardized format. RSS feeds allow people to keep up with websites in an automated manner. Fortunately, FanFeugo allows the use of RSS feeds throughout the website.

On our site, we use RSS Feeds for the following:

• If you have your own blog outside of FanFuego.com, you can pull in the RSS feed into your FanFuego.com account.
• We feature several RSS news feeds to keep you updated on your favorite teams, leagues and players.
• You can create your own RSS feeds of FanFuego.com based blogs for you to follow!

There are other uses, but this is good for now!

Thanks!

Sincerely,

The FanFuego Staff

There are a number of ways to contact FanFuego.com.

• If it is related to general comments or feedback, e-mail us at feedback@FanFuego.com.
• If it is related to a bug or system improvement, email us at notify@FanFuego.com.
• If it is related to marketing partnerships and opportunities, email us at marketing@FanFuego.com.
• If you need to call us or just need a human voice to talk to (yell at or send sweet nothings to...) then call us at 1-877-FAN-FUEGO.

We'll do everything we can to get back to you as soon as possible! Promise!

Sincerely,

The FanFuego Staff

How to use on FanFuego…Privacy Settings

We at FanFuego want to make your experience as good as possible and it starts with your privacy settings.

Each one of us differs in how we want others to see or connect with us.  Therefore, we’ve put in place a number of different privacy options for you to choose.

Please make sure to recheck your privacy settings today to ensure your settings match your expectations.  The following directions provide you with an overview on how to review and alter your settings.

Under "Edit Account", open the "Privacy" tab.

Or under the My Home page, select the Privacy option on the left hand side.

Once you are on the privacy page there are four options to control:

Profile Access

My Network Visibility

Recent Activity Feed

Site Messaging

(see image below)

Profile Access: Simply who can see your personal profile page.

My Network Visibility: Determines who can view which networks you belong to (i.e. Chicago Bears).

Recent Activity Feed: Shows your recent FanFuego activity such as recent picture or blog posts, status updates or comments that you made on someone’s dashboard. Recent activity is shown on each person’s profile as well as your friends’ “MY HOME” page.

Site Messaging: Determines who can write you a personal message sent to your FanFuego inbox.

For each of these privacy options there are 3-4 different settings you can choose:

• The Public – You are allowing people who aren’t logged in and are not either fans or friends to see your profile.  This also means that people can e-mail you internally if they are not a friend.
• Anyone Logged In To FanFuego - Any person who has an account set up and is logged in.  However, people can e-mail you while not being a fan or friend.
• No One – Your profile and activity is completely not accessible to the FanFuego system.  Umm. We don't suggest you actually do this, but it is an option.

Once you make your privacy selections, press the save privacy settings button at the bottom of the page. You can also adjust your settings at any time.

We hope this helps!

-The FanFuego Team

I hope that you are enjoing the existing personality skins that are featured on the site.

Every week, we are trying to add new ones for you to review, pick and change out as you desire.

However, at this time, we aren't allowing customized personality skins created and uploaded by fans.  It's a tricky wicket, but we hope to figure out how to allow you to do so as soon as possible.

Until then, if you have a suggestion for a personality skin, please let us know at feedback@FanFuego.com.

Thanks!

The FanFuego Team

At FanFuego, our professional athletes are excited to be on the site because they feel they can get genuine engagement with their fans, so they were willing to provide their real names on our site. In return, they request that their fans return the favor as well.

As you can imagine, on other sports sites, users who use fake aliases feel like they can make comments without retribution while keeping their true identity hidden. Our goal with FanFuego is to create real engagement with people willing to have open conversations responsibly. Our athletes are willing to do it and we hope you will to.

By the way, another reason to use your real name is so your friends will be able to find you when they sign up on the site. If you look around, even the FanFuego staff use their real names, from the CEO all the way down to each of our support staff!

I hope you now understand why we desire the use of real names on the site. It makes the experience better and keeps engagement authentic between you, your favorite athletes and other fans on the site.

Thanks for coming to FanFuego!

The FanFuego Staff

Well, first...that's cool. It's always cool to know a professional athlete.

After the newness wears off, your professional athlete friend is just a friend. However, the fifty million others on the site aren't on the same terms.

As a result, we've given control of friending an athlete up to...the athlete.

What you will need to is become a "fan" of the professional athlete and he/she will need to friend you back for you to become "friends."

While this seems inefficient, our athletes have thought that this is the best way for them to manage their relationships.

I hope that helps!

Sincerely,

The FanFuego Staff

The creation of FanFuego sounds like the beginning line of a joke:

"A sports agent, a marketing guy and a former Facebooker walked into a room..."

The weird part is, that is exactly how it started.

In 2007, a group of us were sitting around talking about how to help the professional athletes we work with get marketing opportunities and create incremental income. The problem was, while these athletes were great people who were hardworking, strong, and even starters for their respective teams, it was difficult for them to make money. Companies were only interested in working with the marquee sports and athletes.

As a result, we put our heads together to figure out how to help the athletes we work with, as well as all the other athletes who faced the same dilemma. Also, in talking with fans, we learned that they wanted a site which allowed them to truly engage with athletes who wanted to connect with their fans in new and exciting ways.

We took those ideas, threw them into a virtual pot, added in a social networking approach and voila - FanFuego.com was born. Our goal is to make it THE website where professional athletes and passionate fans connect!

We'll admit, there is still a lot of work to be done before we reach our end goal, but this is a good start and we hope you enjoy it.

If you don't, just wait a day and come back because everyday we're improving the site. And, as more and more athletes come on board, you'll see how great this site is for the passionate fan!

The End....or really, The Beginning.

The FanFuego Staff

Do you have a blog that you want to share with your friends and fans on FanFuego.com?  If so, it's easy!

Step 1:  In the "MY HOME" or under your "MY PROFILE" drop down, select the "edit blog" tag.

Step 2: Click on the "Link to External Blog" tab on the top of the box.

Step 3: Visit the location of your home blog and follow direction on how to copy the RSS or XML feed to your site.

Step 4: In the empty box on the "Link to External Blog" page, paste the RSS or XML feed and click enter.

That's it!  Your blog should show on your proflie page for everyone to see!

If you have any questions, please contact us at feedback@FanFuego.com or call us at 877-FAN-FUEGO.

Thanks!

The FanFuego Team

In developing the name FanFuego, we wanted to come up with something that communicated the passion that sport evokes in fans, whether it's in America or abroad.  As a result, we felt the word FanFuego best suited our goal.

Fan means...well....fan.  And "Fuego" means fire in Spanish.  In a sense, we're trying to create Fan Fire, or, a passion for sports that comes from within each of us.

We hope our site allows you to feel it too!

Thanks.

The FanFuego Staff

Nope.  Sorry.

Just Kidding!  Of course you can!  We even make it easy for you.  All you need to do once you are logged on is click on the "MY HOME" tab on the navigation bar, and there you will see the "invite a friend" option on the left side of the page. You can invite your friends to join you in a number of ways, including:

• You can import addresses from your GMail, Yahoo, MSN, Hotmail and AOL emails accounts to invite your friends.
• Send specific email invites to friends.

Either way, we make it EASY for you to invite your friends to join you on the leading online sports networking site, connecting professional athletes and passionate fans!

Sincerely,

The FanFuego Staff

If you want to be it....great!  However, tagging allows you to assign keywords to everything you upload, making it easier to share and find the things that are interesting to you and your friends.

How does it work?

When you upload a photo or post an article, you are asked to "tag" it.  For example, if you have a picture of Chicago Bear Nick Roach, you can start typing in keywords that best represent the photo (i.e. Nick Roach).

Once you save the photo with the tags, it'll show up on your page as well as pages related to the tag.

This concept is called cascade tagging, which works like this: if you tag something related to a larger group, it will tag to levels that are immediately above it. For instance, if you tag the Chicago Bears, it will also tag the NFL and Pro Football.

Please note, at this time, we haven't allowed tagging of user names, but are focusing on sports related tags.

If you have questions about this, please contact us at feedback@FanFuego.com.

Thanks!

The FanFuego Team

Well, yes and no.

Our software will reduce the size of any photo that you try to upload, but we ask that you try to keep the size under 2mb just because we're expecting a whole lot of 2mb photos to be uploaded in short order.

Also, our photo closet isn't very big and we share it with the water heater....

...and that's where we put Milton's desk as well, but he really doesn't mind since we gave his stapler back to him. ;)

Thanks!

The FanFuego Staff

Well, which ones do you want us to cover?

Honestly, we know that you can get coverage of the BIG 5 sports (NBA, NFL, MLB, NFL and NASCAR) almost anywhere on the internet.

Our vision is to not only cover those sports, but also cover the sports that have incredible fan bases with no great place to get consistent, daily news. These not only include U.S. based sports, but sports around the world!

In addition, we're here to tell you the stories of some of the great, unheralded athletes from these sports that are coming on our site to connect with you. You may not have heard of them at first, but hopefully we can help make you a new fan in short order.

So maybe we're a bit unconventional, but we're about covering the passion of sports. Every athlete has a fan and we want to tell their story - because it's a good one!

I hope that helps! If there are sports you want covered that you can't find on our site, let us know at feedback@FanFuego.com and we'll consider it.

Thanks!

Sincerely,

The FanFuego Staff

* The Big 5 sports in our minds are NBA, NFL, MLB, NASCAR and NHL.

It's pretty easy actually.

First, find the athlete you want to become a fan of through the various search functions on the site.

Then, you select the profile of the athlete and click the button to the right of their profile picture that reads "become a fan."

From there, you'll start getting updates on that athlete's activity in your own network activity listing on your "MY HOME" page.

If, for some weird reason, you don't want to be a fan anymore, just go back to that athlete's profile page and click the "delete" button.

There are a lot of things that makes FanFuego.com different from other sports sites.

First, we're providing both professional and amateur athletes a platform to connect with their family, friends and fans through a social network built exclusively for sports.  In addition, to help these athletes, we're giving them the tools they've wanted to help them promote themselves and even make some money in the process.

Second, we're looking to utilize the best and latest web 2.0 technology to allow you, the fan, and athletes the ability to communicate with each other online and in real time.

Finally, most sports sites utilize a push strategy - which means they push information to you about sports.  You get it, digest it and move on.  Our goal is to provide you with a place to interact with your friends and the athletes on our site, about anything that you may be passionate about.  We want to be the place you can get your sports appetite satisfied as well as dish it out too.

Thanks.

The FanFuego Staff