MediaPost released a blog post last Monday discussing how more and more sideline reporters for the major networks are leveraging social media tools like Twitter during games and telecasts. As an avid sports fan I think this is great, especially as we are looking for the most up to date information about the games and athletes specifically. It’s been interesting to watch the evolution of how sports news is disemenated to the masses of fans – gone are the days of following your favorite team by checking out the boxscore in the morning newspaper. In fact, if you’d like a good listing of sports writers that are on Twitter to make your reporting even more realtime check out this list that Box Score Beat publishes.
Through the Internet, Social Media, and real time updates from news outlets and athletes alike, the common fan is exposed to knowledge about their favorite athlete or team in ways they never dreamed possible. In addition – it gives that same fan the opportunity to ask questions in real time of their favorite stars. I’ve looked for a reliable source to identify a complete list of the top professional athletes and came across this document – literally a shared spreadsheet in Google Docs. What’s great about the accounts that they’ve verified is that it not only targets the athletes, but also has an entire section dedicated to the official league and team twitter accounts. Kudos to Roger Goodell (@nflcommish) for effectively bringing in his entire executive staff along with him as he jumps on the Twitter bandwagon. I wonder if he and Michael Vick are going to hash out his suspension in 140 characters or less…?
Moonfruit nailed it. Give people the chance to win something they actually want. Tweet and potentially win a MacBook Pro each day, for the next 10 days. As you might guess – they are top trending topic on Twitter today. Well played.
The hot social trend for the first half of 2009 has been undeniably, Twitter. Everywhere you look brands, personalities, heck even your grandparents have some sort of relationship with the micro blogging tool. The usage growth of Twitter has been well documented in my blog and in many blogs more interesting than mine over the last 6 months. This month, we see that growth slow for the first time in a 12 month cycle. Granted, Twitter enjoyed a phenomenal spike over the last quarter and will continue to grow – but will it see another burst that we saw between February and May of this year, visible in the graph below? I think so – especially if we continue to find innovative ways to use this form of communication. Steve Johnson has a fascinating article in Time that details the effect of Twitter on our every day life and the potential for it to drastically change the way we live. Clive Thomas is quoted in the article as saying Twitter provides us with ‘ambient awareness‘ of our social and physical networks. It’s that ambient awareness that keeps us hungering for more…
Ok – admittedly, I am just ramping back up in the digital universe after being on holidays for the last two weeks. I did find this as an appropos way to re-enter the V/Speak blog and add a little humor to the new week. Enjoy.
As we’ve seen this year, Twitter adoption and usage is exploding. The site and tool is outpacing major news publications in unique visitors on a monthly basis and every day a new usage model or add on is coming to market to take advantage of the fervent growth of this micro-blogging service. Tools and add-ons around a service are great – however the real value is in your followers. Chromatic published a ‘Top 10″ report on how to “Keep Your Precious Followers on Twitter”. Very useful and spot on. Here is the summary list, visit their site for more comprehensive details.
1. Be Consistent with your Tweets
2. Quality is Greater than Quantity
3. Separate Accounts for Personal/Family and Professional/Business
4. If Posting Links, Provide Commentary
5. Balance Self Promotion with Sharing
6. Maintain Good Twitter Etiquette
7. Avoid Controversial Topics
8. Interact with your Followers
9. Direct Message Etiquette
10. Try to Tweet on a Daily Basis
I, being in my nascent stages of Twitter usage, apparently have very little Twitter Cred…but get some love on Google – see my results. What I find baffling is that neither service does a good job of selecting ‘portions’ of the search term. For example – search ‘Veneski’ vs. ‘dveneski’ vs. ‘David Veneski’ and you get vastly different results. Logical or did I just ‘mis-brand’ myself on Twitter?
You can quickly see how you rate through a service call Twoogle. Since there is a big debate these days about Twitter Search being more ‘real time’ relevant than the results through Google, this is a pretty interesting side by side comparison of the search capabilities of each medium.
From Compete. Hmmm…Free, constantly updated with “See what’s happening — right now“, and portable. How could it not? Continuation from my previous post that only included NYTimes.
“Revolution teamed up with i-level’s social media agency Jam to reveal the 100 most mentioned brands on Twitter and how they are aiming to capitalise on the buzz”
There are quite a number of technology companies ahead of @intel. I wonder if they are aggregating all of our Twitter mojo? Collectively our social media teams here at Intel will work hard to earn a steadily rising rank on Twitter. Intel – Sponsors of Tomorrow.
In a move to stem their flagging viewership, MTV has ‘gone social‘. The Alex Chung Show, slotted in the highly important after school slot will be the Total Request Live of the social networking generation – going so far as to allow users to interact directly with programming in real time by uploading their favorite videos, including their own creations, that might be slotted in for air time on the show. Appealing? Maybe. Then again – maybe they should remember what they started in the early 80s and actually play some videos. Will Social Media Kill the Radio Star?
I referenced Oprah in my post yesterday… It appears that her influence extends beyond just the NY Times Best Seller list and has been a ‘tipping point’ for bringing social media tools (specifically, Twitter) to the mainstream.
From Hitwise: “So what was the Oprah-Effect on Twitter?…. Share of US Internet visits to Twitter increased 24% on Friday, April 17, the day of Oprah’s first Tweet. Comparing visits with the previous Friday, visits were up 43%.”
When you consider the increased ramp in traffic overall with Twitter this year and the report from Tech Crunch that they are ‘poised to double their monthly traffic once again’ – pushing their monthly uniques to more than 30M, these are very impressive statistics.
In a move to stem their flagging viewership, MTV has ‘