Athletes like Laurence Maroney are letting us into their lives with Twitter, even if we might not want to go there...
Vince Wilfork reminds us that “everyone wants to be paid what they deserve.” Laurence Maroney is “golfing with Chi Chi girls.” And David Beckham was pleased to have “one 5 to 2 the final.” David Ortiz just hopes that everyone had a good holiday.
These are just some of the comments that athletes have posted on Twitter in the last few months. Social networking with the stars of sport and their innermost thoughts and desires.
There is no doubt that social networking has made the world a smaller place. We exist in a society of tweeters, facebookers, googlers, feeders and bloggers.
Sometimes we can even find the time to interact with human beings in person.
But when we can’t, we are more than happy to have snippets of other peoples’ lives be drip fed to us like lab rats awaiting the next shot of whatever drug will alleviate a yet-to-be invented pandemic. In some ways, Twitter has become that disease.
Since Evan Williams (the creator of Blogger) launched the site in 2006, the 140 character blog site has divided opinion. For those who tweet, it is an invaluable way of communication, a chance to provide links and information to their followers which may be useful. For the unbelievers it is a complete waste of time that takes narcissism to new levels and provides a feed of useless thoughts which seem to be centred on what someone had for lunch or what they are wearing.
Twitter is more than that. It is an opportunity to create and maintain a brand in 140 words. If you follow pointless people, you will get pointless information. For sports fans across the globe, sport is not pointless. It can be the only thing that matters and the chance to get the inside track on what a favorite athlete or club is doing is something that the average fan could only have dreamed of before the social networking revolution. Plus, athletes need to brand themselves too.
There are some problems with professional athletes having direct access to their fans. Occasionally, they publish comments that can prove to be damaging to their employers, for example certain soccer players in the U.K. have been fined by their clubs for inappropriate whining about not being picked to play. A global audience means that you have to realize that the global brand needs to be protected. All publicity is not necessarily good publicity as Tiger now knows.
Then we have the problem of whether the star we think we are following is legit. Search for Tom Brady and you get tmbrady12, Tom_Brady, TheRealTomBrady and a host of individuals who are not married to Gisele. Research is required to ensure that we really are following the Brady we want. (That’s why we’ve compiled so many of the real players’ social media accounts on BostInnovation this week.)
Twitter relies on followers as do sports stars. Big Papi has 18,699 followers on Twitter, he follows 1 person. Beckham (davidbeckham_23) has 10,585 users hanging on his tweets and follows nobody.
For professional athletes and the big business disguised as professional sports, social networking is the next step in the evolution of the sports brand. Human beings are essentially social creatures, and sports stars are human beings too.
Twitter just brings us all together.
Editor’s Note: Dave Bolton recently relocated to the U.S. from the United Kingdom. He isn’t quite a full-blown Luddite, but he’s certainly a skeptic. For more of his work, check out his blog, Limeyview. You can also follow him on Twitter @SandmanDave.
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