After years of on-and-off match reports and reviews, we have come to the conclusion that it isn’t the right direction for the Super Rams website.

This is not to say it’s the end of Super Rams.

What happened?

When Simon Jobling setup the website way back in 2001, it was the motivation from Derby County fans that inspired him to start the project.

During that time, the web was heavily focussed on user-generated content, masses of new content contributed from blogs and communities. It seemed the natural direction to take the website was with fresh content about Derby County from the angle of a Derby County fan, not from any old unbiassed football reporter.

Unfortunately, due to other commitments on Simon’s part, the content became irregular and sporadic which had a negative effect on the website. The website lay dormant for weeks at a time which didn’t reflect well on Derby’s high-profile performance.

After discovering a few other Derby County fans on Twitter, Simon asked Jon Nicholls if we would be interested in contributing content to the website. Jon jumped at the chance and wrapped up the 2008-9 season with some fantastic reviews.

During the summer break, Simon also found James Dennis on Twitter who seemed to have a real knack for writing good content. After a quick conversation, James was on board and took it in turns to write match reviews alongside Jon for the 2009-2010 season.

It has to be said these two main contributors have done a marvellous job over the last year reviewing all the matches Derby County have played. Through all the highs and lows (more prominently the latter), the boys have managed to highlight all the positives from the matches as well as glancing a fair, critical eye on the low points. Muck kudos to the two for their efforts – without them, Super Rams wouldn’t have lasted as long as it has.

What next?

It’s still early days so we’re not entirely sure which direction to take the Super Rams project.

The social web has made huge impressions on the people of the Internet over the last few years, most obviously on Facebook and Twitter. There’s a real community aspect in these entities that truly reflect the sort of environment prevalent at football matches.

There have been several efforts at introducing an online element to football matches over the last year, especially with augmented reality functionality available on the popular iPhone and the real-time Web. We’re keen to embrace these new techniques and technologies on Super Rams, possibly be at the forefront of a new era in football online.

Only time will tell on where we take Super Rams but, rest assured, Super Rams is not dead. We will return and, hopefully, with a lot more to show for it. More will be announced here as and when decisions are made.

Until then, keep supporting Derby County – the club, the players, the fans – and here’s hoping for a more successful campaign for the rest of this season.

UP THE RAMS!

If you’ve not yet heard of Twitter, it is another social network, similar to Facebook, but with a different angle – it is all about your status. Twitter asks the question what are you doing now? and you respond, similar to the status feature of Facebook, with something like is writing on superrams.com.

One fundamental difference with Twitter though is the fact it is platform-independent – that is you can use the service from whatever device you prefer. You can use Twitter via SMS on your mobile, there is a mobile version of the website, you can even get it interacting with your IM client using the Jabber protocol (if you’ve got a Gmail account, that is also Jabber-enabed). Some nice developers from around the world have also created small applications to sit on your computer that are solely there for interacting with Twitter.

So there’s no denying the fact Twitter is a useful application but what the hell has all this got to do with Super Rams? Well, how about getting Derby County news direct to your mobile, as it happens, and all for free? That sounds good right? It’s quite easy to do – just follow these instructions:

1. Sign up on Twitter using the relatively simple registration form
2. Make sure you add your mobile details to your devices
3. Pop on over to twitter.com/derbycounty and hit the Follow button
4. Hit the Device Updates link and check the Device Buttons On radio button
5. That’s it. Every time the news is updated on the BBC or Evening Telegraph, you will get a SMS alert.

Currently, you get an allowance of 250 text message updates a month but that should be plenty for the news alerts from Derby County.

Go and sign up – its free so what have you got to lose?

Update: news from the official Derby County website is now included in the updates thanks to some magic by Dapper.