Free Joga Invites!

Update: It seems they have opened up Joga for the masses. Mondine in the Google Community informed me of the update. Thanks!

__________________________________

Some of you may have heard about this new Google-Nike joint venture--and then again some of you may have not.

For those of you who are curious Joga.com is a community base on one thing--football (or soccer if you live in the US).

Here's a description below:

Welcome to Joga - the community for soccer players dedicated to keeping the game beautiful.

Joga is a place to meet other soccer players, share your own soccer experiences and enjoy photos and videos from around the world.

Join us and help remind the world how the game was meant to be played.

Play beautiful

In my honest opinion Joga is everything Orkut should be and makes its older sibling look...ugly. With videos, authentic celebrity profiles and even a mini blog tool (did I mention the ability to change your background?) Joga will become the dominate forum of choice--at least for soccer fans.

If anyone is looking for free Joga invites (yes free...and you don't have to be a member of Orkut in order to join it, although others are advertising) all you have to do is post your request in the Joga Invite Pool and one will be sent ASAP!

See you there! And play beautifully!

Orkut's Cooler Brother (Joga)

Although I have been away for a while (work, family, life, etc.) I was fortunate enough to receive an invite into an Orkut style forum totally dedicated towards football/soccer.

Here is more from the Google Blog:

What do you get when Google and Nike get together and brainstorm? A sneaker-shaped server? A great TV ad for web search? No, you get Joga.com, an online football community that combines Google technology with Nike's unique sports content and access to players. Joga brings people all over the world together to celebrate their shared passion for the game of football (for you Americans out there, by "football" I mean "soccer").

Unfortunately Joga puts Orkut to shame, as it has several features that Orkut lacks such as the ability to change your background, built in weblog (very basic compared to Blogger.com) and last but not least no mention of the donut error of death.

One neat thing about it is the ability to view your Orkut forums through Joga.

For those of you unfortunate enough to be on the outside, Prashanth has screen shots...and possibly an invite as well (something I'll add to this weblog later on).

Nike And Google Launch Social Network

(Hat Tip: iPlot)

I do not know what is more surprising--Nike getting into the "social networking" jungles or that Adidas did not develop this first. Either way, I am glad they at least chose Google.

(BusinessWeek) Nike and Google, hoping to take social networking to a new realm, have quietly launched the first invitation-only Web site for soccer-mad fans around the world. Joga.com went live late last week and will soon be running in 140 countries and 14 languages.

The two companies have been working on the site for the past eight months and are expected to publicly unveil it this week, BusinessWeek has learned. Nike is supplying the content, and Google is the technical partner. But the site looks similar to other social-networking outlets such as News Corp.'s MySpace.

I have already requested an invite inside of Joga.com, which is a social network soley dedicated to the topic of football (aka soccer for those in the US).

You may need a Google Account in order to gain access within...I wonder if the football/soccer forums are aware of this?