Google, Nike Team, Play with World Cup

With the soccer season in full bloom and the FIFA World Cup around the corner, Google and Nike have teamed up to create an innovative community to promote the upcoming event. "Joga" is an invitation-only online community developed to connect soccer fans and players all over the world and increase buzz leading to the World Cup.

Within the community users are able to create their own teams and clubs, even accessing athletes via Nike. Other enticing elements to the site are exclusive photo and video clips of the athletes themselves.

"Joga," which stands for "Joga Bonita" (Portuguese for "play beautiful") is based on Google’s social-networking platform and can be found at the domain name joga.com. Nike plans to capitalize on the "invite only" scheme by creating an exclusivity buzz around the site and invites those not already invited to submit their personal information (name and email address) for consideration—which doubles as a savvy way to gain consumer information.