SBNation.com Relaunched!

Good Morning Everyone,

Some exciting news this morning from SBNation, as of last night at 10 PM, they have completely overhauled sbnation.com, with a ton of new features, and a sleek new look to compete with the big boys.

Here is the message from SBNation CEO Jim Bankoff:

Sep 9, 2009 - We are lucky here at SB Nation HQ. We have an outstanding network of 212 (and growing) sports communities, which enables us to be in a constant dialog with fans and to gauge what is important to you. While the old SBNation.com site served its purpose as a directory of our awesome individual sports communities, you let us know you wanted our flagship site to do more. You wanted the same high quality fan perspectives and conversations on a national level that each of our individual sites offer for their respective teams and sports.

After listening to you, we are eager to share the principles that will guide us on this site. They are the same virtues that have made the individual sites in our network so successful:

Be Timely: We'll update you with major news as soon as it breaks and link you directly to the source. It's our pledge to be the most timely resource on the web for national sports news. The sports news cycle is constant. We are combing the waterfront, sifting through the river of sports info on the web (and there's a lot of it) to make sure we point you to the best -- in real-time. Be prepared for frequent updates.

Be Open: We'll deliver the most relevant news and opinion no matter where it is: major sites, local sites, Twitter streams, video clips, national blogs and of course, our own network of sites. While you'll see our communities play a prominent role on SBNation.com, we're not stopping there. Just like our blogs, we will integrate valuable insights from wherever they occur. Journalists and bloggers can submit their stories with a click; readers can contribute their opinions to the conversation.

Be Real: We won't parrot the agenda or language of the sports establishment. Our focus is the stories and conversations that fans care about, even if those topics aren't always on primetime TV. We'll wrap the news with context, opinion, analysis and, on good days, some wit.

Be Social: The foundation of our network is enabling and encouraging high quality fan conversations. Go to one of our communities and you'll see robust contributions. In fact, just yesterday we passed the 20 million mark. However, more important than the quantity is the quality. Our editors will be active in their communities, ensuring that people are talking to one another, not just shouting past each other.

The site features two primary areas of content. First, we're introducing an innovative new editorial device called a StoryStream. StoryStreams are designed to harness the vast flow of information on the web and empower fans with the most relevant links and narrative for all the national sports stories that matter. You'll notice on most every story a number of updates. "+6 Updates" for instance means that story has been updated 6 times since we posted it. In effect, a StoryStream is its own blog about a given national sports story. Every StoryStream has its own editor on our staff who is accountable for their stream (think DJ for the story), although there may be several contributors from around the web.

Second is the "From Our Editors" section where our staff will be giving their quick takes on the sports news day. Consider it our microblog. We've hired some of the best voices in the national sports blogosphere like Chris Mottram, Eamonn Brennan, Jon Bois and Spencer Hall, in addition to leveraging many of our SB Nation team bloggers like Peter Bean, Brent Brookhouse and Dave Halprin.

All the content from SBNation.com and our network of sites is easily retrievable via the site search we've built. In addition we're providing some basic sports info like scores and stats.

Have a look around and let us know what you think.  If you're a journalist or blogger, submit your entry to our editors so we can promote your work.  If you are a sports fan, join the conversation at SBNation.com or find your favorite team site if you haven't already.

Just to add my own thoughts at the end here, I have always maintained that SBNation sites offer you many things that other sites don't: the opportunity to interact on an intelligent level (or sometimes on a goofy level) with the people that run the sites. Most beat writers for sports teams have blogs now, and yes there is a comment thread for the stories they post, but not many of the writers will take an active part of the conversations on the topics they write about. We do. Everyday we bring you guys these stories, and then have an open discussion with you on those stories.

Also, many if not all of those beat writer blog threads become just a long thread of posters attacking each other. You won't see that here, it is simply not tolerated. Our goal is to make you feel comfortable when you come on our site and want to comment. We don't have to agree on every topic, but there are ways to disagree and have it be civil. I treat this site like its my home, and I'm throwing a party every day for Ranger fans. I 'd want you to be comfortable in my home, and I want you to be comfortable here.

Make sure you go take a look at the new SBNation.com and tell us what you think!