For a long time, we’ve wondered how ESPN was going to resolve the two different social worlds it was playing in — the comments on its own posts and games from “registered” ESPN users, and the Tweets and Facebook comments it used to add fan commentary to its shows, columns and more.
The answer? We just noticed in our ESPN bracket that if you comment in a group, you now have the option to “share” that comment to Twitter or Facebook. See the screen grab to the left:
When you Tweet it appends code showing the comment came from ESPNFantasy, which is a great way for ESPN to get people to play games on their site. Now all we need to complete the circle is the ability to “sign in” on ESPN with our Twitter handles so we don’t have to have all these logins.
Make it so, Worldwide Leader. Make it so.
You will notice I had Louisville. To beat MSU. Might be the only good pick I made the whole tourney. games.espn.go.com/tournament-cha… via @ESPNFantasy
— paulkaps (@paulkaps) March 23, 2012
UPDATE: According to the great folks on the ESPN PR team, Facebook and Twitter share have been a part of the site for almost two years now. But I would swear that I haven’t seen them integrated into the comments system, like they are for the fantasy games and now even in the regular story comments, like the one I just grabbed below. Anyone else notice these things before? Since I am not a “regular” ESPN commenter maybe I’ve just missed them.
UPDATE II: I think I am right and these things were added recently. If you look at the screen shot we took of the ESPN site when the whole “Greater than Tebow” thing erupted on their comments pages, you can see that the tools that are available now for sharing weren’t there last fall. So this has to be a recent, and much welcome, addition. Looking for the day that the whole ESPN and other-site registration thing goes away… we don’t need a personality for every site.
UPDATE III: According to ESPN, the new sharing buttons were just added this week. We stand by our story! 🙂
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