What's it been like for Boolabus? We did a lot of good foundation work in 2009 on the Betstream framework and we are now working on extending it in interesting ways and onto other platforms.

The simplicity, clarity and breadth of offering from Bet365 seems to be consistently popular. 

Twitter have released a widget that searches on specific tags. It's interesting to see what is happening when you search on live betting OR bet in play. Mainly affiliates twittering away to themselves and occasional offerings from the big boys. Take a look...

Vivo is a next generation live betting experience. It was developed on the fundamental assumption that punters aren't going to always have access to live video, especially around the Premier League on a Saturday and the lesser leagues (lesser in betting terms).

We know that live pictures televised on terrestrial or satellite TV can increase betting volumes 20-fold and up to 5-fold if streamed online. So the challenge was this - could we use data and audio to achieve the same or even a fraction of that uplift. A well respected colleague of mine called this "the TV effect".

The other guiding principle was to focus on real time information and to bring this relevant data to the customer as it happened. So to take a football example, if Stevie Gerrard hits a thundering long-shot and it went just wide then it would make sense to let the punters know about his typical 'shots on target' percentage and link that information to the next goalscorer market. It's the right information at the right time.

If you look on any bookmaker's website you will see one or more pop-up windows displaying a deep database of clickable stats from fine companies such as PA Sport, Betradar, Enetpulse, Betgenius, Opta etc. One problem with this approach is that they require the user or punter to know what they are looking for and to find and analyse the information for themselves. It's not a fun task and only appeals to 3% of customers who naturally love it figuring it out for themselves. A complementary but arguably more effective approach is to bring the relevant information to the punter in real time and create what is in effect, a virtual Mark Lawrenson. Stimulate the punter with relevant information and get them engaged in specific markets and events.

Did we achieve this? I think we might have. In hindsight, I can think of easier ways of producing the same result and better ways to develop it in less time. The core team at Boolabus are very proud of it - we designed and developed it! It was a challenge but we learned a lot about content synchronisation, prioritising data and what is the best experience for punters before during and after the sports event. We developed server applications to merge different data sources and flash applications to display data and to play audio blasts as they arrived from every game in many leagues.

That experience matters. With Boolabus we're even more focused on developing products that drive real revenue and we are currently working with one or two partners on initiatives that will move the game on further.

One thing is for sure; the underlying principles in Vivo should be used by every bookmaker to grow their live betting customer base and revenues.