• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, March 7, 2016

Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry is taking his game off the court and online with a new social network for athletes, Slyce, which he co-founded with his former teammate from Davidson College, Bryant Barr. Slyce is intended to help athletes manage their presence across multiple social media platforms, streamlining the process and boosting fan engagement.

Curry was inspired to found the social media management platform by his own difficulty keeping up with social media, which many pro athletes hire an assistant to manage or simply outsource to a PR or communications specialist. Among other capabilities, Slyce serves as an automated filter for incoming content from fans and followers, while also allowing athletes to post content to all their social media accounts simultaneously.

To help promote the new platform, Curry used Slyce for a Q&A session where the best fan questions were bumped up based on his criteria.

The platform is attracting new users: According to Geekwire, Atlanta Hawks forward Kent Bazemore and Baltimore Ravens running back Justin Forsett are also using Slyce.

Pro sports and social media are a natural pairing, giving fans a forum for celebrating, trash talking, commiserating, and exchanging stats and trivia. On that note, Facebook recently announced the launch of “Facebook Sports Stadium,” a hub for Facebook users to follow games live along with their friends, also integrating a variety of external media.

Facebook Sports Stadium offers live coverage of sports matches, highlighting play-by-play commentary from the user’s friends as well as sports journalists, analysts, teams and leagues, along with the required cornucopia of stats, player profiles, game schedules and other related information. The content is posted in real time and appears chronologically.

Last year another social network for sports fans, Fancred, introduced a feature that allows users to live stream their own sports commentating videos, using a system similar to Periscope. The new capability builds on Fancred’s original functions including text and photo sharing, all focused on sports. Also in 2015, Major League Baseball partnered with Vixlet to launch a new social network for baseball fans called “MLB Fans,” which allows baseball fans to connect with their favorite teams and players as well as other fans, and enable them to post personal photos, videos, comments, and “likes” for a range of baseball-related content.

Another network, Sqor Sports, features news updates, videos and photos, and collects content posted by current and former pro athletes on other social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, aggregating it in one place for easier consumption and interaction. And Sprylogics launched an app, Breaking Sports, that allows sports fans and fantasy players to see sports news aggregated from all their favorite social media channels, conveniently collected in one virtual spot.

Meanwhile, the referees are also getting a say, thanks to the National Basketball Referees Association’s (NBRA) online initiative, created by Commerce House, which includes a Web site and social media presence to engage the public and humanize the men and women who call the games.