SANTA CLARA, CA and NEWPORT BEACH, CA--(Marketwire) - Today, JockTalk, a sports social network created by professional athletes for sports fans, is launching in private beta at DEMO Spring 2012 in Silicon Valley.

JockTalk is changing the way athletes and sports fans communicate and share with each other by providing a singular location for fans and athletes across the entire spectrum of sports to post conversations, videos and photos, enabling richer fan interactions.

The platform also offers athletes the opportunity to generate income and awareness for the causes they support, and easily engage their fans in new and impactful ways.

JockTalk has enrolled over 60 launch athletes that are leaders in their sports league and their adoption of social media, including from the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, MLS and Olympic sports.

JockTalk facilitates deeper engagement between fans and athletes through tools such as user rankings, charity involvement, and special recognition opportunities.

All text, photo and video posts on JockTalk will be simultaneously published to Twitter and Facebook, offering a one-stop social media publishing platform. JockTalk content will also be syndicated across top online sports publisher sites. A mobile application for the iPhone will soon be available.

JockTalk provides:

• Professional Athletes a way to easily engage their fans and turn their social media activity in to a powerful marketing tool that generates income and awareness for the causes they support. Athletes will also be able to recognize and reward their most loyal fans in more meaningful ways.
• Sports Fans a singular social network to follow all of their favorite sports and athletes -- as well as 'insider access' to behind-the-scenes Q&A, photos and videos direct from athletes.
• Sports Publishers valuable, premium social media content from professional athletes, incremental traffic and new revenue opportunities.
• Sports Marketers highly desirable and segmented passionate sports fans at scale, and unique opportunities to engage and associate their brand with influential athletes.
• Sports Leagues & Teams the opportunity to seamlessly integrate their advertising partners into their social page, and to sell more tickets, merchandise and memorabilia through JockTalk's e-commerce platform.

Former MLB All-Star Shawn Green and digital media veteran Brendon Kensel founded JockTalk in March 2011. Shawn's career spans more than fourteen years with four MLB teams, including the Toronto Blue Jays, Los Angeles Dodgers, Arizona Diamondbacks and New York Mets. Brendon is an experienced entrepreneur and operator with deep experience in diverse digital media, sports marketing and technology organizations.

"Sports social media is experiencing explosive growth, but is lacking in two key areas: Current networks do not offer rich engagement tools, and athletes don't share in the revenue ecosystem that surrounds the social media content they publish," said Shawn Green, Co-founder and former MLB All-Star. "I launched JockTalk to enable better communication between athletes and fans, as well as provide athletes with an opportunity to generate income and awareness for the causes they care about."

"JockTalk helps me connect with my fans by using tools such as fan rankings, where I can identify and reward my top fans, and a Q&A section, where my fans can post questions and I can easily and quickly answer them," said Heath Bell, MLB All-Star and pitcher for the Miami Marlins.

ABOUT JOCKTALK

JockTalk is revolutionizing the way professional athletes and sports fans communicate and share by launching a sports social network created by athletes for true fans. Through a mix of advertising, content syndication and e-commerce revenue opportunities, JockTalk is creating a new ecosystem for the sports industry that will serve to benefit athletes, fans, publishers, marketers, leagues and teams. To find out more and request an invitation to the private beta, go to: http://www.jocktalk.com.

ABOUT DEMO 
Produced by the IDG Enterprise events group, the worldwide DEMO conferences focus on emerging technologies and new product innovations, which are hand selected from across the spectrum of the technology marketplace. The DEMO conferences have earned their reputation for consistently identifying cutting-edge technologies and helping entrepreneurs secure venture funding and establish critical business. For more information on the DEMO conferences, visithttp://www.demo.com.