Tennis fans have been using collaborative technology to monitor the progress of their favourite players at this year’s Wimbledon Championships.

Wimbledon.org -­ the official web site of the championships ­- is managed by IBM and supports interaction with a range of social technology platforms such as Facebook and Second Life.

“We want to focus on an interactive web site that provides real-time data for the fans,” said Elizabeth Hammer, programme manager for IBM.

The onsite Slamtracker application allows fans to delve deeper into match statistics and visualise players’ progress. Fans can take a widget from the Wimbledon.org site and display player information in other social networking applications.

Second Life participants, meanwhile, can use their avatar to look around an online representation of the Wimbledon technology set-up and interact with IBM staff.

Ian Hughes, consulting IT specialist for emerging technology services at IBM, said the platform provides an exciting development for spectators.

“IBM has a big presence in Second Life and we want to show the potential future of sports events,” he said.

Hughes said about 5,000 IBM employees work in Second Life. Wimbledon.org received 8.6 million unique visitors last year, and IBM hopes to beat that during the 2008 championships.

Information for the site is hosted on three IBM pSeries server farms. The set-up has helped reduce heating and cooling by about 23 per cent since its introduction in 2004.

The infrastructure set-up and support team moves around a series of sporting locations during the year, including all four tennis grand slams.