A roundup of items recently posted on the FSB News page.

– In this transcript from an interview on Moneyweb podcast, Bloomberg Sports head Bill Squadron speaks of the growth potential Bloomberg saw in the fantasy sports field and the role that played in developing its new sports-themed products. Squadron also says that the company plans to expand beyond baseball but has yet to nail down which sport will come next. That would seem to indicate no offerings for the upcoming NFL season, which will open in less than three months.

– Braves infielder Eric Hinske is not only a fantasy player, but apparently a fairly avid one. He informed Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan before Wednesday night’s game that the Falcons quarterback appeared on three of Hinske’s fantasy teams in 2009.

– Just to prove that pretty much everyone has an iPhone app at this point, fantasy content site Razzball has launched theirs. (Oh, come on. I’m joking. “Razz” is right there in the name.)

– According to this eMarketer report, a consumer that is a Facebook fan of your brand is likely to spend twice as much as one who is not a fan. The real value of a Facebook fan, however, is tough to nail down and will vary by that person’s activity level.

– Checking back in on Dreamstreet Golf, the startup fantasy game site that we mentioned on here about a month ago, it looks like the contest still has yet to launch. The just-completed U.S. Open had been the targeted first tournament, but anyone who has tried to put on an online game probably knows just how easy it can be to miss even the most realistic targets.

– Are you a sports uber fan? In her writeups of the recent Sports Marketing 2.0 VIP Summit, the OCD Chick mentioned Yahoo! Sports’ Kyle Laughlin classifying sports fans in the “casual,” “everyday” and “uber” categories. The qualifications for “uber” tend to match up with the most engaged and serious fantasy players. Yahoo!’s challenge/goal is to convert fans in the other two groups into engaged fantasy players.

Send all of your news, job postings, stories and profile ideas to FantasySportsBusiness@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter (FSBcom).

A roundup of items recently posted on the FSB News page.

– Nando Di Fino of The Wall Street Journal recently took a look at the allure of World Cup fantasy games for several companies, beginning with the official FIFA game sponsored by McDonald’s. Unfortunately, he also followed the false step of ESPN’s “Silly Little Game” in crediting Daniel Okrent with inventing fantasy sports. If the creator of Rotisserie scoring is bitter about the money being made off “his” game, just imagine how it feels to have been playing fantasy sports in the 1960s and then see various national media giving credit to a bunch of folks young enough to be your children.

– Middle Eastern firm Quirkat is supporting a Facebook app that presents World Cup fantasy “football” in three languages: Arabic, English and French.

– Fantazzle has struck a deal via Curv Sports to add Ravens running back Ray Rice as a sponsor for some of its games.

– Bloomberg Sports recently launched an iPhone app to provide its analytical baseball product to mobile users.

– Plenty of outlets have their fantasy offering for the World Cup, but the site launched by ad agency Host presents something different: A game that awards dirty play. Top scores will be achieved by “moments of utter filth, times of unforeseeable but creative cheating.”

Send all of your news, job postings, stories and profile ideas to FantasySportsBusiness@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter (FSBcom).

The iPhone app released recently by Footballguys.com enjoyed a strong debut and has engendered a pretty positive response so far. Developing such a product must have taken a decent chunk of time, right?

“The app went from a thought to fully developed in about 6 weeks,” Footballguys co-owner David Dodds told FSB.com, saying that the thought was first mentioned in March at his company’s retreat to Tennessee. “At that time our guys had no idea how to develop an iPhone app. We discussed a simple news app there and went home and ordered Bruce (Our C++ Windows coder) a Mac and the Apple programming books. He started with the basic examples and caught on quickly.”

The app has a fairly large amount of fantasy functionality, which Dodds said basically serves as a smaller version of what visitors can do on the Footballguys website.

“We obviously had to change some things because of the tiny space, but most of the time we were able to just create a slightly different mini version that displayed the data,” Dodds said.

Although users don’t get access to Footballguys articles, the app does connect you with items such as player news, the daily e-mail newsletter, podcasts and team depth charts. So what does giving that info away to iPhone users do for Footballguys from a business standpoint?

“We think it’s a great marketing tool,” Dodds said. “On our first day as a download over 1,900 people downloaded this app. It shows the capabilities of what we have real well.

“Our eventual plan will be to release a premium version (with slightly more functionality) for a small fee (likely 99 cents).”

A roundup of items recently posted on the FSB News page.

– Picklive has announced a free public launch of its immediate, short-term fantasy model to run alongside the World Cup. For those who like the increasing prevalence of daily and weekly fantasy games but can’t stand that unbearable wait for the day to actually end will be able to play “7.5-minute” fantasy matchups during soccer matches and change their lineups as play goes on.

– After selling FFChamps.com in 2006, cousins Ian and Jon Millman recently teamed up with Andrew Miller to buy the content-and-services provider back.

– Yahoo! is rolling out a global sports campaign to accompany the World Cup, including a pick-em style game called World Soccer 2010.

– ESPN.com’s regional sites have garnered plenty of play — particularly during ESPN broadcasts — and drawn many noteworthy writers from newspapers and websites in the areas they serve. The company has now rolled out locally focused iPhone apps to extend the targeted style of coverage.

– This London-based outfit is looking for a similarly British developer for a “fantasy football” site. We can only guess by the location that by “football” they mean “soccer.”

– The guys in charge of Fantasy Knuckleheads have put together a widget that pulls content from a number of fantasy sites. We don’t know exactly which sites are included, but it seems a fair assumption that the Knuckleheads would draw from their own list of recommended outlets.

– The “OCD Chick” is the latest addition to Fantasy Sports Ventures’ Fantasy Players Network.

Send all of your news, job postings, stories and profile ideas to FantasySportsBusiness@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter (FSBcom).