Tag Archives: Twitter

Apr 16 2013

#PleaseRT: The New Autograph Request

Anyone who has been on Twitter for an extended period of time has seen it. The RT (retweet) request.

Fans asking their favorite athlete or celebrity for an RT on their birthday or as their biggest fan. RTs are today’s version of the personal autograph. A personal memento or bragging rights for all internet eternity to see? Most likely it’s both. 

They’re innocent. Harmless.

Unless, of course…

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Autographs used to be a fairly innocent exchange. In days of old (long before my time), children would write letters to athletes or celebrities asking for an autograph. As time progressed, kids (and yes, adults too) would line stadium rails or player exits to ask personally for autographs. Signatures became gold helping lead to a boon in the sports memorabilia industry. Gold. 

Figuratively, and sadly, literally.

But in today’s sports-social media landscape, the RT is today’s autograph.

RTd by Felix Hernandez

RTd by Michael Kay

RTd by Vontae Davis 

There are fan requests: 

Just because requests:

Help in promoting a website or cause:

A need for recognition:

Some athletes use it to their advantage (a review of Marshawn Lynch’s Twitter timeline shows a large number of RTs for fans): 

While some athletes don’t quite “get it”:

Is there any harm in asking for an RT? No.

It may clog up people’s timelines but there are ways to avoid this (turn off retweets or use TweetDeck filters to name two). Is there a way for fans to profit off of it? Not for the forseeable future.

Until then, this story from the Washington Post puts Twitter and autographs  in a whole new light. 

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What do you think? 

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CadChica Sports

Mar 15 2013

#SMSports: Facebook Hashtag- Count Me Out

“Facebook Working on Incorporating the Hashtag”

Big announcement in the social media community yesterday. Big. According to the Wall Street Journal headline (and story link) above, Facebook is exploring the idea of hashtags.

Hashtags are Twitter territory. A simple click on a hashtag displays any and every tweet using it. It’s a nice curation tool, unless the topic is extremely hot in which case the tweets fly by non-stop if you’re using a third-party app like TweetDeck. If on the web, it’s a game of constant page refresh. But, when the topic isn’t so “hot”, finding what people are saying about a topic or, as in the case of sports, a live event, it’s quick, easy and invaluable.

Which makes this announcement interesting. Interesting as in, I’m not sure how Facebook can make a dent in the Twitter domination of the 2nd-screen market.

[Full disclosure: Count me as someone who resists using Facebook on a personal basis. I use it for business purposes. When Facebook starting making their mass changes several years ago, it soured me on its appeal. Well, that, and reading certain individuals' mundane updates about their game-playing scores, political rants or their unsolicited "pokings".]

Covering sports/social media as in-depth as I do, I am able to see first hand not only what people are saying but which moments make an impact on the viewer. I am able to see the build-up of a moment become a trending topic. The power of  the retweet (RT) enables word to spread quickly about something memorable that happened in sports.

While many think it’s the RT with the power, I would argue that in live event moments, it’s the 140-character Twitter limit that allows for success as a 2nd-screen resource. And that’s the advantage that Twitter will have over Facebook, especially in sports.

Sports, unless we’re talking golf or baseball, is fast action. Quick hits. Split-second moments that prompt immediate responses in us. Our immediate reactions range from “WOW!” to “DID YOU SEE THAT?” to “BOOM! #WINNING!!!!”.

No muss. No fuss. No need for long drawn out monologues of analysis. Just pure, simple emotion.

Twitter fits that bill nicely. 140 characters is the limit. People have adapted and are making it work.

But what of Facebook? Will their new hashtag incorporation also include a character limit like this?

Probably not. And that’s where I think it “may” fail. Realize that this is pure conjecture on my part but I speak as both a fan and a media member. When you’re in the middle of a game, who wants to read a long-drawn out analysis by someone using the hashtag #Lakers on Facebook. By the time you finish reading it, you may have missed 3 or 4 great plays. And if you choose to watch instead of read the boring analysis, will you remember to go back and read it? By then, what’s the point? 

I can see this being beneficial to companies that use hashtags in their ad campaign. But if people find that it’s cumbersome to use, then why use it?

Am I wrong? Maybe.

However, if I wanted to read paragraphs upon paragraphs when University of South Carolina’s Jadeveon Clowney’s hit on Michigan’s Vincent Smith while the game is going on, I’ll go to a message board.

(Lord, help me if I do that)

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UPDATE: While doing research after this post, I came across this article on Facebook’s commercialization. In essence, the focus to increase ad revenue is driving “users” away. Whether that is accurate or not, I don’t know. But it does provide food for thought in the context of hashtagging on Facebook during “live” sporting events. May not be as beneficial to businesses as they may hope for sports advertising. 

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CadChica Sports

Mar 11 2013

When 7Up Got Onioned

It’s not often that I venture into topics outside of sports/social media on my blog. But today, I am, because of an interesting tweet: 

Now I didn’t see this tweet first. I saw a retweet by The Onion of this one: 

Because The Onion retweeted it, I was compelled to look further into this. Today Now? Never heard of it. That’s not saying much since I do not watch morning tv shows. Checking the @TodayNow Twitter profile, I noticed the website link: 

Today Now todaynow on TwitterThat site (http://www.theonion.com/shows/today-now/) takes you to The Onion’s “Shows” page: 

Today Now Video The Onion America s Finest News SourceNOTE: “Sponsored by”

One would think that the people at 7UP would check the website or at the very least, check to see if  @TodayNow is a verified account (it’s not). Granted the check mark isn’t foolproof but a business can’t be too careful these day – have to start somewhere. 

The Onion continued the repartee:

7UP, still clueless, sent their reply: 

No word as of post time whether this relationship has been “consummated”. I did try to reach out to 7UP, via Twitter, to give them a “heads up”: 

Sadly, the 7UP people aren’t checking their Mentions as I have not received a reply. Or they did, and are too embarrassed to tweet anything. Or too busy trying to come up with a creative way to cover their backsides? 

One last thing: Some of the replies to 7UP’s tweets are…just as clueless. 

Or maybe this is all just a ruse to something so creative it’s beyond me. 

It is Monday after all. 

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CadChica Sports

Mar 10 2013

Brandon De-Knighted

De-Knighted: Losing your Knight-ness when this happens:

Lord knows what Brandon Knight was thinking. Ain’t no way he was gonna stop DeAndre Jordan on this alley-oop. And sadly for Knight, thanks to Twitter, the whole world is talking about it.

Brandon E Knight BrandonKnight07 on Twitter

Twitter, as you would expect, went crazy:

Even LeBron James chimed in:

But Amanda Rykoff put it best:

About those mentions…

Perhaps the ultimate insult?

We’re “praying” for you Brandon. We’re praying for you. 

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ADDED (because the tweets are just too good):

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ADDED (Well done, Brandon. Well done.)

https://twitter.com/BrandonKnight07/status/311001874239221760

CadChica Sports

Jan 26 2013

CadChica’s SSM Digest: January 2013

Looking for a new way to report on sports and social media, I want to take a look at Twitter happenings on a monthly basis this year. Let’s call it “CadChica’s Sports Social Media Digest” or “CadChica’s SSM Digest” for short.

This month has already proved to be fascinating with the Lance Armstrong, Manti Te’o, Alabama championship stories, just to name a few.Those stories have been written, re-written and scrutinized to death  so there isn’t much more to add to them. To start this off, however, there were two athletes that joined Twitter this month that intrigued me: Maria Sharapova and Kobe Bryant.

My expertise is not in marketing, per se. But I do understand branding, engagement, trends and  fan-athlete or fan-media relationships on Twitter. Upon closer look, their two cases proved quite the contrast.

*****

Two well-known athletes joined Twitter this month. World famous athletes, in fact.

One athlete already has a million followers.

The other, nearing 110,000.

One plays a major sports in North America.

The other, plays their sport world-wide.

Kobe Bryant and Maria Sharapova both joined Twitter this month. As well-known and recognizable world-wide as Sharapova is for both her on-court and off-court activities (commercials, modeling), it would seem logical that she would be the athlete with over a million followers.

But she’s not. That honor belongs to Kobe Bryant.

It’s interesting to note the two paths Bryant and Sharapova have taken in their first month on Twitter. Yes, there is the case of Twitter follower gap. But, it’s notable as to their joining and subsequent involvement on Twitter.

Sharapova joined Twitter on  January 14th (prior to the Australian Open) with this tweet:

As of today, she has only sent out 18 tweets. Again, with playing in the Australian Open, that could be a reason for the lack of tweets. Contrast though with the young American sensation, Sloane Stephens. Stephens was tweeting during the tournament, giving away tickets and being a teenager on social media (note: her follower count is at 59K after her upset of Serena Williams - up from 17K  per WSJ.com). 

18 tweets for Sharapova.

And, she is following 30 accounts. USA Today looked at the accounts she’s following in greater detail. They called it her “highbrow Twitter tastes“. Interesting to take that angle when the very first sentence states “…her feed has been a refreshing addition to the barren wasteland of athlete accounts”.

18 tweets is a “refreshing addition”?

Refreshing, to me, is Kobe Bryant’s launch on to Twitter.

It first started with Bryant taking over the Nike Basketball Twitter account (@NikeBasketball) in late December. Seemingly out of the blue, nobody knew that it was the first step in his venture to join Twitter himself. But on January 4th, the Black Mamba became “social” and it has been highly successful.

Successful with both a Nike hashtag, #CountOnKobe, and perhaps the first of its kind live-tweeting event of his historic 81-point game in 2006 against the Toronto Raptors. Kobe had never watched the game before:

The fact that he’d never watched this performance combined with the fact he was live-tweeting it proved very “refreshing” in terms of athletes’ Twitter accounts. Fan or no fan of Bryant, it was a brilliant strategy in the sports/social media world of branding, marketing and especially, athlete access.

Quite the contrast between the two athletes. Both are Nike athletes, yet only one received fanfare from Nike on joining Twitter. A quick check of the Nike Tennis Twitter account shows no formal mention of Sharapova actually joining Twitter. One would think that a world-famous athlete of Sharapova’s caliber would garner at least a mention, but no.

That seems a bit of a failure on Nike’s part. Nike could have helped Sharapova to “get” Twitter, understand the value of connection, and if nothing else, make sure she or her people realize the power of it.

Time will tell if this proves to be a winning strategy for either Sharapova or Bryant.  I am, by no means, not one who focuses solely on Twitter followers. The fact that you can “buy followers” proves that those numbers can be skewed. Add in the fact that there are people who follow others just to “gain followers” (think people with relatively equal numbers of followers and following), numbers can be deceiving. But the way Bryant has used Twitter to engage, proves that he’s well on his way to “getting it”.

Maybe Sharapova will “get it”, if this tweet from yesterday is any indication:

And Kobe…well, yeah, he gets it:

*****

CadChica Sports