5. The Smaller Services

Facebook

Website: apps.facebook.com/fbfantasy/landing

Users: Citizen Sports (the company behind the Facebook fantasy football application) has more than 170,000 users on Facebook.

Cost: Free

Features: Facebook is new to the fantasy football game. “Easy” seems to be the keyword here. Facebook touts its easy smack talk, easy one-button control system…and lots of other easy stuff. The One-Click Lineup option would appeal to users who are short on time or energy. (Using the players you already have on your roster, Facebook can set the best lineup for you based on its projections for the week.) There are also multiple draft options, including live draft. Plus, columns from "Sports Illustrated" and player news and updates from Rotowire.com.

Note: Citizen Sports plans to launch a similar application on MySpace in the near future.

Pros and Cons According to WhereIStand.com Sports Topic editor Geoff Decker:

Pros: Facebook partnered with "Sports Illustrated" and Citizen Sports Network for its analysis and RotoWire.com for its regular news updates. Both are pretty insightful and intuitive for finding exactly the information you’re looking for, but it doesn’t have as readily available fresh content like CBSSportsline and ESPN. Still, considering it’s a social network and features UGC first and original content second, I’m pleasantly surprised.

Facebook’s flow and intuitive characteristics are definitely evident with this app. Everything is super easy to find and get to. The message board is simple and concise. Facebook’s interface dominates like no other and it’s no different in this case.

Cons: Facebook was actually the only league for which I was going to do a live online draft (the others were in-person) but when it came time for league members to sign on and begin drafting, the site crashed and the draft was botched! It was really, really disappointing. As a result, Facebook "auto drafted" our teams, thus taking out any ownership for our team’s success. A woman from the application’s customer services apologized personally and gave the league a $50 gift certificate to Amazon for the league champion. Clearly, there were some kinks that needed to be worked out.

So that’s an important caveat. I haven’t been super into that league because there are no stakes involved and we didn’t actually draft our own teams.

EA Sports

Website: fantasy.easports.com

Users: Details not available

Cost: Free

Features: EA Sports is known for its sports-related video games like the Madden series. Not surprisingly, the big draw of its fantasy football service is the game-related features. You can import your fantasy team into Madden NFL 09. You can also manage drafts and get live scoring via your Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 systems.

CBS Sports

Website: www.sportsline.com Highlights: Offers several different fantasy games to choose from – some are free and others are not. The free version offers free season-long live scoring, mobile access and the ability to compete for a cash grand prize.

Pros and Cons According to WhereIStand.com Sports Topic editor Geoff Decker Pros: Up-to-the-minute news and player updates that are visible from the league homepage that can be filtered to reflect specific players on a team. It’s a go-to source for fantasy news.

A lot of great Web 2.0 tools and functionalities encourage user-generated content and participation: The "add-a-story" feature, commenting on players, customizable homepage and the chat feature on the Fantasy GameCenter page.

Fantasy Game Center is the best way to follow your team’s progress while you chat with your fellow league members.

Stats center – this is also very advanced. You can customize reports, compare players, filter by position, team, availability...and then save the reports for future use.

Cons: In general, the site’s flow is choppy. When a site forces you to use the back button on your Internet browser, it usually means there’s an unnecessary amount of clicking to do to get where you want to go. Oftentimes, I find myself on a page and will want to intuitively see a related page, but it’s impossible to get there without first going back to the league homepage. It’s very frustrating.

Analysis is nothing special. Jamey Eisenberg and Dave Richard are the main Fantasy Football writers, and they are tirelessly updating, but it’s not enough fresh, original content for daily reading.

The message board is primitive. This is sort of related to the first bullet point, but the message board is the main source of communication, so it needs to be as easy as possible.

NBC Sports and Rotoworld.com

Website: www.100k.nbcsports.com Highlights: NBC and Rotoworld have joined forces to host this free fantasy football competition in which players can compete for a grand prize of $100,000.

Fox Sports

Website: www.foxsports.com Highlights: Draft guide, real-time scoring, research tools, expert analysis, opportunity to win a chance to meet LaDainian Tomlinson.