Introduction

Steven Speldewinde and Eric Zirgulis are the Co-Founders of FishTwits.com. Steve (a law graduate from Australia) and Eric (a history graduate from California) met whilst pursuing Masters Degrees in Entrepreneurship at Lund University in Sweden. A short time into their Masters degree a discussion of heading to the Swedish lakes in pursuit of the enormous Pike contained within led them to the realization that they were both passionate fishermen and the idea to start a company in which they could pursue this passion was born. When they met Dave Sherohman a talented web developer and John Steiner a designer with a penchant for water puns, Eric and Steve’s dream of creating an online hub for recreational and sports fishermen to find and share the best fishing content on the web was born.

Where did the idea for this technology come from?

When we first came up with the idea for starting an online company for recreational fishing we wanted to build an entire social network from the ground up. This was a very exciting stage in developing our company where the possibilities seemed to be endless. We had done a few basic designs of how we wanted our technology to look and function (just using PowerPoint) and started to approach a number of developers to find out how much it might cost (given our very limited student budget) and how feasible it was. Quotes ranged from $15K – $100K but it wasn’t until we met Manfred (another online entrepreneur) that someone suggested we do some basic concept and usability testing for our tech. It was at this point that we realised our original concept was not only going to be incredibly expensive to develop but was also essentially unusable!

At this point, to be honest, we came very close to giving up. However, the great thing about starting a company doing something you love, particularly fishing, is that the thought never really leaves your mind and when you’re out fishing, you have a lot of time to think. After a particularly unproductive trip from a fishing perspective, Eric and I had been bouncing a few ideas around and came up with a solution. Build a much simpler site and take advantage of tech that is already out there (e.g. the Twitter APIs) and then slowly build our feature set.

We started with a very basic feed of fishing information sourced from Twitter and then started to add features that we found useful as fishermen. For example, Twitter let’s user’s follow people – this is useful, but we thought it would be even more useful if fishermen could follow information on species of fish (e.g. steelhead trout), techniques (e.g. fly fishing) and locations (e.g. Florida) – we have some big plans to improve our location tech!

You are encouraging user interactivity, not much seen in the fishing world, why?

One of the best things about fishing is the people you meet! There is nothing better than getting out on the water with someone new, it’s the quickest way to learn new skills and ultimately catch more fish. Fishing has always been a pretty interactive sport for me, whether it be chatting to guys at the local tackle shop or the guy just down the river who is seemingly hooking up at will and of course there is nothing better than recounting the story of the one that got a way over a couple of beers in the evening! In our experience, fishermen love nothing more than to share their stories which is why we think that the interactivity of social media is a natural fit for the fishing world. There are more than a thousand fishermen who already contribute to FishTwits.com and we hope that this number is going to continue to grow.

We are really encouraging our users to not only share their photos and links but also to interact with other users by replying to their posts and photos (we have made it easy for user’s to track replies by including a link back to the original post with every reply).

We are also encouraging our users to help other users find the most interesting fishing information available online. To do this, user’s can vote for great posts by clicking the ‘Hit’ button, they can then view the highest voted posts by clicking ‘Biggest Hits‘. Our aim is to have a user voted list of the best fishing information online not only overall but for each species, technique and location (these can be viewed by clicking ‘Biggest Hits’ on for example the Trout page). The more people that vote, the better the information will get.

How is this tech relevant to the everyday angler?

A simple, quick and easy way to find and share the latest on fishing, whatever type of fishing you love!

What role do you see social media having in the future of the fishing industry?

Three things really excite us about social media and the future of the fishing industry.

1. mobile
2. location
3. recommendation

As the web becomes more and more accessible from your mobile phone and you are able to check-in to locations to find out what is happening locally, social media will become a lot more interesting and powerful. For fishing, we think this is especially exciting! Imagine being able to check into a fishing location and see who else has been fishing there, what they caught and how they caught it all in real-time. From an industry perspective we believe that this increase in data will enable companies and other fishermen to recommend great products to people who will appreciate them.

What is your ultimate goal with this tech?

If you look at our vision for the future of social media in fishing, you will get a pretty clear idea of what we are aiming for. We want to revolutionize the social aspects of fishing. We are also committed to promoting sustainable and environmentally friendly fishing practices to preserve the sport well into the future.

We really want our users to drive the development of our tech. If you have any suggestions please leave us some feedback.

Before you launched FishTwits.com, you ran the ‘Eurofishin Photo Contest’, can we expect more competitions like this in the future?

The Eurofishin Photo contest was a lot of fun, we got some amazing fishing photos from all over the world, including our eventual winner, the legendary Simon with his condom Pike fly. We will be running the Eurofishin competition again this year but before then, we have another very cool competition planned.

We are looking into setting up of a social fishing league table to create a bit of friendly competition and encourage people to share their photos. Points will be awarded for each fishing photo you upload – with some cool twists like higher points for being the first to upload a new species and loads more! It is going to be loads of fun, we have already lined up an iPod touch and are hooking up more prizes as we speak. Stay tuned to the FishTwits blog for an announcement of the launch date and details within the month.

Explain your favourite fishing experience

My favourite fishing experience is still my first. When I was about 4 on a family holiday down the coast and Dad and I wandered down to the rocks lining the estuary. Dad helped me bait my hook with some stale bread and started teaching me how to cast. Within half an hour my confidence was up and I thought it was time to have a cast for myself… inevitably I managed to somehow end up with the entire spool of line tangled around the reel. Perplexed, I looked up at my Dad pleadingly and he came over to patiently try to detangle while I held his line. It couldn’t have been more than two minutes later that I felt a thump on the end line which almost pulled the rod right out of my hand… Dad was quick to react and with his help we started to bring the fish under control as it darted toward the rocks. Eventually we brought in what turned out to be one of the best pound for pound (I was a lot fewer pounds back then) fish I have ever caught, a nice yellow fin Bream.

What is your favourite species of fish?

King George Whiting. These are a brilliant Australian fish, quite similar to the Bonefish. There is nothing better than wading the sand flats in some of the beautiful Australian estuaries and rivers and casting small surface lures or flies for these guys. They put up an awesome fight and they are delicious eating.

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Fetha Styx Blog Home

I’m the owner and founder of Flyfishmap.com. Brought up in Nottingham, England, I now live in London with my long time girlfriend, Bryony (whom I’ve even taught to fly fish). I’m 39 and aside from FFM, work as an Internet publishing consultant to media agencies and direct clients in the UK. I’m well traveled having lived and worked in Australia, Hong Kong and Sri Lanka and of course, I’m a fly fishing addict.

Where did the idea for this technology come from?

A couple of years ago, I became more aware of Google Maps mashups and their potential and realized that I could develop something pretty useful based around fly fishing. I looked around and found directory sites and localized maps but nothing that really covered fly fishing from a global perspective and so I set about developing FlyFishMap.com

You are encouraging user interactivity, not much seen in the fishing world, why?

We realized pretty early on that this would only have legs if the content was user generated. There are plenty of Google maps mashups out there where the content has been solely generated by the site owner, they’ve basically mapped all they can and the site is essentially finished. But Flyfishmap will always grow and develop because there will always be another great video, photo or article around the corner.

What is your ultimate goal with this tech?

The site continues to grow and we aim to get as much useful and entertaining information on there as possible. I envisage the site going through several stages as the content grows. Stage 1 being ‘interesting’, then stage 2 ‘useful’, stage 3 ‘valuable’ and stage 4 ‘invaluable’. We’re still in stage 1 right now for most visitors and leaning towards stage 2 for the international angler. We also have exciting plans to develop the site further and increase the functionality of markers. Ultimately we want FlyFishmap to be a unique one-stop shop for planning fly fishing trips anywhere in the world.

What’s your background?

Well I’ve been fly fishing since I was 8 years old. Business wise, I’ve worked in magazine publishing and new media for most of my career and am passionate about the web and the opportunities it offers, having worked in start ups as well as with established businesses growing their digital offering. Outside of work and aside from fly fishing, I like to shoot when I get the chance. I’m also partial to a game of snooker and enjoy watching football (soccer!) especially my home team, Nottingham Forest.

How is this tech relevant to the everyday angler?

I love to fish new places and FFM is proving to be a great way to find new places to go or to dream about going fly fishing. At the moment the site is probably most useful for the traveling angler but as we are moving into Stage 2 ‘useful’, the everyday angler looking for more local information will find the site helpful. Of course, because the content is generated by users, we hope fly fishers everywhere will embrace the collaborative nature of the site and add their own photos and videos. We would also like them to encourage their local tackle shops, guides and places to stay to add their own markers too – the more people and companies involved, the more useful it will be for everyone.

One of our main targets this year is to encourage more conservation organizations to use the map to its full potential and show anglers the important issues that are affecting the areas they fish in. I hope that FFM can play a role in educating fly fishers about critical conservation issues because the more people who know about them, the more people there are to fight for government/local authorities to take action. When we promote the content from these organizations on FFM, we can help build a stronger voice for the fly fishing community all over the world.

Where do you see your site in 5 years?

We’ll hopefully have many thousands of markers in 5 years and the site will have become an invaluable tool for planning fly fishing trips anywhere in the world. We also have lots of exciting plans to develop and expand the technology and launch more services to businesses using the platform, as well as giving our users a lot more functionality. We certainly have mobile aspirations and as Google develops its mapping technology we will be taking advantage as we see fit.

What role do you see the use of social media in the future of the fishing industry?

Social media is playing an increasingly important role in many types of business and the recreational fishing industry is no exception. This new ability to communicate and interact directly with people from all over the world and from all walks of life is amazing and I think companies which don’t seize this opportunity are shooting themselves in the foot basically.

From the start, I felt it was important to develop a presence on Facebook, Twitter and Linked In, places where we can directly connect with fly fishers and fly fishing companies and more importantly where they can interact with us.

I think we’ll see increasing usage of people accessing these sites via mobile in the next few years and it will also be interesting to see how location based services such as Foursquare and Gowalla can become applicable to fly fishers.

Explain your favorite fishing experience or best day on the water.

Well there’s so many to choose from and the great thing about fly fishing is that there’s always the chance of another ‘best’ day around the corner J. A couple of years ago, I did have a fantastic day on the River Avon in Hampshire, UK. It was a mayfly hatch that I will never forget as there were literally clouds of them in and around the water. The fish were going absolutely crazy and I caught a few nice ones but to be honest it will remain in my memory as just an amazing spectacle to behold rather than a red letter day.

Favorite fish species?

Probably the sea trout (sea run brown trout or ‘sewin’ in Wales.). It’s a fantastic fighting fish and we usually fish for them at night in the UK. They’re very wary and difficult to catch but it’s incredibly exciting standing in a Welsh river at night, casting a fly into the dark, then getting a savage, arm-wrenching take and trying to control an explosive bar of silver as it leaps around the pool.

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