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Highlights, Verizon NFL Mobile Twitter Chat with Pittsburgh Steeler LaMarr Woodley

November 1, 2011 by

I’m getting a little bit addicted to these “Twitter chats” hosted by Verizon Wireless and its NFL Mobile app. However I do find them a little hard to follow in real time since the delay between the fan-tweeted question and the NFL player reply is often interrupted by a bunch of new tweets — meaning that you tend to lose the question before you get the answer. Our solution? Highlights! Call us the SportsCenter of Twitter chats. We don’t mind. Here’s some of the better exchanges between fans and Pittsburgh Steeler LaMarr Woodley, who is a Twitter animal — looks like he replied to every question posted.

Has anyone checked out #NFLMobile? Watch the @ from ur phone on Sunday 11/6 at 8:20pm EST. #NFLMobile

November 1, 2011 7:11 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite
@LaMarrWoodley

Pharaoh Renegade


Here’s Woodley hyping NFL Mobile: Nice sponsor move LaMarr!

@ Are you a fan of the other Pittsburgh pro sports teams, the Pirates and Penguins? #NFLMobile

November 1, 2011 7:24 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite
@AtoZSportsWPPJ

Zac Weiss

@ of course and the panthers and the power #NFLMobile

November 1, 2011 7:28 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite
@LaMarrWoodley

Pharaoh Renegade

Here’s a radio show host asking if Woodley likes other Pittsburgh teams (and his reply):

@ Were you playing the year Penn State lost to you at the last second? #NFLMobile?

November 1, 2011 7:27 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite
@Bnat66

Bryan Natusch

@ yup was fun to ruin their season lol #NFLMobile

November 1, 2011 7:29 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite
@LaMarrWoodley

Pharaoh Renegade

A collegiate question, and Woodley’s Penn State smackdown w/LOL

@ Be honest. What feels better, hitt brady or flacco? #NFLMOBILE

November 1, 2011 7:05 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite
@PeteyLee726

Petey Luckenbaugh

@ thats like asking whats better, eating filet or eating rib eye both are great #NFLMobile

November 1, 2011 7:09 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite
@LaMarrWoodley

Pharaoh Renegade

One fan asks if it feels better to sack Brady or Flacco. Woodley replies with a menu selection.

@ What’s on the ipod before games? #NFLMobile

November 1, 2011 7:34 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite
@captmrose

M Rose

@ varies sometimes hip hop sometimes gospel #NFLMobile

November 1, 2011 7:35 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite
@LaMarrWoodley

Pharaoh Renegade

Then of course, the obligatory “what’s on yer iPod” question.

Also noticed that the spam questions with links to porn sites did not appear… is that some good editing performed by Twitter and Verizon?

Filed Under: Athlete to Follow, NFL, Twitter, Verizon Wireless Tagged With: , ,

Twitter Loves ESPN Loving Twitter

October 28, 2011 by

This is very meta-meta, but: A screen shot of a picture taken by Twitter of ESPN showing live Tweets on a TV broadcast:

I think it’s safe to say we’ll see more folks on Twitter tonight. Go Game 7!

Filed Under: ESPN, Twitter Tagged With: , ,

Friday Grab Bag: HP is Back!

October 28, 2011 by

ViewSonic offers low cost Android tablet
Looking for a low cost tablet? Well ViewSonic wants you to know that it is now in the game with its ViewPad 7e Android tablet. The 7-inch display uses an older version of Android and not the more recent Honeycomb version of the OS but it does have a $200 price tag and includes a 1GHz ARM A8 processor, dual cameras and 4GB storage with a microSD card slot for expansion.

Dodgers blame beating victim
I know that blame the victim is a standard tactic in legal matters but do the Dodgers really believe that they can convince any rational person that Bryan Stow, beaten into a coma at Opening Day at Dodgers Stadium was responsible? It sure looks as if they are going to as part of the owners’ battle with MLB. It couldn’t be the funding siphoned from the team to support the owners’ expensive lifestyle, could it?

ESPN teams with Nokia for sports fans
ESPN has teamed with smartphone developer Nokia to offer a mobile sports technology for the fan on the go. Called the ESPN Hub and slated for release in 2012 it has been specifically designed for the latest generation of Nokia smartphones that run Microsoft Windows operating system. The ESPN Hub will have a different look from other ESPN products and the company claims that it will help make navigation of content smoother and more intuitive. Hopefully this will turn out better than the Mobile ESPN effort from a few years ago.



HP- We are back! Will not leave the hardware business after all.
Hewlett-Packard back in the hardware business, gee we hardly missed you. The company has made an about turn and has decided that it will not spin off its personal computer unit after all. The decision was made by CEO Meg Whitman. The move reverses the proposal put forward by Whitman’s predecessor, ousted CEO Leo Apotheker who announced the move as part of a corporate overhaul. AT the time the company was smarting over the poor sales of its tablet computer, the TouchPad. It now looks like future tablets are in store for the company, but may use the Microsoft OS.

iPad 3 to sport new connectors?
Rumor du jour: C|Net is reporting the possibility that Apple will launch an iPad3 in March and that it might have connector issues. The site, citing another site, reports that it will have a redesigned dock connector that uses the same number of pins as the old one but in a different, and smaller, configuration. The screen is expected to remain the same size and there is now word if it will stay at the current resolution level or move to the Retina Display technology already in use in other Apple products.

Can teams be a bit too touchy about Twitter?
The recent tempest in a teapot comes from Boston where New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski felt obligated to apologize for appearing in photos with BiBi Jones, an adult film star who then posted them on Twitter. It was taken during a bye week and he is free to do as he feels. I wonder how long it will be before Puritan in Chief Roger Goodell issues a ruling on what players can do in their free time?

Filed Under: Android, Apps, ESPN, iPad, iPhone, Live sports via mobile, Tablets, Twitter Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

(W)hooping it up at TEDx, Jimmy Lynn Says Sports Social Media Key To Consumer Tech Demand

October 26, 2011 by

Former AOL Sports head Jimmy Lynn said “sports always drives adoption of new technologies,” and “we’re in the fifth inning” in determining winners and losers in the sports social space.

Lynn, who made his comments at TEDx PennQuarter on Oct. 24,  is managing partner of the global strategic advisory firm JLynn Associates and on the faculty of Georgetown University’s sports industry management program.

From 1995 to 2009, he was a driver in creating AOL Sports as a major online destination, and central in AOL’s overall success.

Lynn said sports social media content developers must focus on mobile devices. In such countries as China, Brazil and India, there are huge sports audiences, and those people already get their content on mobile devices, he said. Reliance on the mobile device for sports information is bound to occur among fans in the United States, he said.

“I tell my students: go global, mobile and green,” Lynn said.

The Twitter Opportunity

Lynn said Twitter is already ingrained in the sports fan experience, and it has paved the way for professional athletes to — for the first time — begin making money through digital sports information.

“We’ve been trying to figure out how to monetize athletes on the Internet since 1995,” Lynn said.  “And, we could not figure it out. Twitter is one of the first ways. Athletes can tweet they are wearing a product, and that (tweet) moves people (to purchase the product). All of sudden (the athletes) are getting paid  five grand, seven grand, 10 grand.”

Facebook Promising, But Untapped

Facebook is also a complete game changer, Lynn said. It is one thing to have a healthy presence on Facebook, and quite another to turn that audience into paying customers, he cautioned.

“To me the Holy Grail in social media is how to take this huge social media audience and drive e-commerce,” Lynn said. “That’s the end game.”

Sports Blogging Sites Promising

Make no mistake, big media is in a run for its money in the brave new world of sports social media, Lynn said. He identified the rise of such sites as SBNation and bleacher report into the top 10 most-trafficked online sports destinations as indication that speaking out on sports is every bit as compelling as reading about sports.

“These guys are competing with ESPN, Yahoo, CBS and Fox,” Lynn said. “And they are right there in the top 10. Why? People like to get their opinion out there. Just like sports radio was the big thing in the 1980s, now, people are blogging, blogging and blogging.”

Lynn said SBNation and bleacher report hold an advantage of the media mainstream. That is, they provide an outlet for people to talk about community sports, including high-school sports. They also facilitate the production of sports video by amateurs, and give amateurs the opportunity to try their hand as sportscasters. That kind of sports social media would get lost on outlets that focus on college and professional sports, and it is a huge opportunity for SBNation and bleacher report and others going forward, Lynn said.

Sports drives consumer demand for technology

“Sports always drives adoption of new technologies,” Lynn said.

In making this case, Lynn took a historical perspective. He pointed up that horse racing, baseball and boxing were key to getting consumers to purchase radios in the 1930s, and that baseball and football drove television purchases in the 1950s, and color television set purchases in the 1960s. In the 1990s, satellite television allowed displaced fans to tune into teams they loved buy couldn’t see because they did not live in local markets, he added. And sports drove the digital revolution beginning in 1995 by providing sports scores and fantasy sports statistics. Today, sports will drive consumers to purchase mobile phones and tablets in ever-increasing numbers, he said.

Lynn on center stage

Lynn’s comments signal that sports social media thought leaders are focusing almost exclusively on the impact of mobile devices when evaluating new sports business opportunities. His appearance at the nonprofit TED means the thought-leadership clearinghouse has begun to see sports social media as a major cultural phenomenon.

As mobile devices win the day among consumers, competitors in the sports social media space must continue to provide the basics, Lynn said.  

“Scores drive a sports site,” Lynn said. “It was (true) then and it is now.”

Filed Under: CBS Sports, ESPN, Facebook, Jimmy :Lynn, NBC Sports, Twitter Tagged With: , ,

Why Do Some People Still Question Twitter?

October 25, 2011 by

I still encounter people that say that Twitter is a fad, and will soon pass. I imagine that some day it will be relegated to the technology trash bin as so many technologies have, but I doubt that is in its near future.

Last Saturday while watching a football game at the local pub the person next to me proclaimed that only narcissist movie stars and athletes used it. Aside from being amazed that he knew what narcissist meant, I was a bit surprised since it has become so prevalent. But his opinion is one that I still hear, although less and less, but even MIT linguist Noam Chomsky recently blasted social media as “superficial, shallow evanescent”

This doubting just goes in the face of the rising tide that is Twitter. Just this week the New York Times ran a piece on how the Republican Party has embraced Twitter as a tool for the next presidential election after dismissing it as unimportant in 2008 at a time when the Democrats had adopted the technology.

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said a week ago that it is now seeing 250 million tweets a day, up from 100 million at the start of the year. During an interview at Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco he also said that the company now has 100 million users, with half logging in every day.

CNBC has a brief article, or rather a dreaded slide show, called the world’s 10 most tweeted moments. The article does not state where the info comes from or why it said that when the news of Steve Jobs death broke it averaged 6,000 tweets a second but that did not make the top ten, and then goes and lists others with less tweets per second in the top 10 list.

Still the list provides a good look at what people find the most interesting/important news and events to tweet, with natural disasters and sports being the clear cut leaders. While an outsider might think that most tweeting is done by athletes, politicians and movie stars the huge numbers that are generated, and their global aspect, show how ubiquitous this technology is becoming, and according to the article there are roughly 5 billion tweets a month already.

The list starts with Osama Bin Laden’s death at #10 with 5,106 tweets per second and then in descending order includes the East Coast Earthquake, last game of the 2011 NBA finals, Japanese earthquake and tsunami, Champion League Final between Barcelona and Manchester United, 2011 BET Awards, New Years Day in Japan 2011, Brazil eliminated from Copa America, and the FIFA Women’s Cup.

The top tweeting event, I have to admit, caught me by surprise. It was Beyonce revealing her baby bump at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards on August 28, 2011, with 8,868 tweets per second. Of course considering that she has roughly 2 million followers on Twitter that should probably be no surprise.

Still sports is hugely represented, and Twitter clearly understands its importance to sports and vice versus. It has published a guide on how to use the technology and pointed out best practices from teams that have already embraced the technology. A look at what the company can be read in a nice piece written in MSR by John Evan Frook.

When you look at the numbers from the CNBC piece the first few are fairly close and then it starts to spike upward, with the numbers growing at a fairly rapid pace. The growth has no real time line as some of the higher tweeting events are early in the year

I think that it is a fairly safe prediction that within a year, most if not all of these numbers will be crushed by newer events such as the Superbowl, the BCS Championship game, election news and the natural disaster of the day. The list shows that the technology has a broad, deep and growing appeal with strong hooks in both world events and sports, both local and world. Anybody or organization ignoring this risks marginalizing themselves to important segments of the public.

Filed Under: Twitter Tagged With: , , , , , ,

How To Use Twitter For Sports Promotion

October 20, 2011 by

Make no mistake, Twitter recognizes that sports social media is an integral part of its appeal, and it has published a guide for college and professional sports promoters on best practices for keeping fans engaged.

The guide is aimed at employees of teams with large numbers of sports fans, but it is a useful resource for anyone interested in using Twitter to build interest in a team. Here’s the case Twitter makes for using its service to get the word out:

Twitter and sports fit together because sports are live, immediate, suspenseful, and fun—and these are qualities Twitter mirrors and enhances in real-time. People use Twitter to follow their favorite players, sports writers, and teams, but most importantly: they use Twitter to talk about games as they happen…With every touchdown, goal, or home run, you can literally see the spikes in Twitter activity.

Statistics Show Sport Fans Interaction

To build its case, Twitter highlighted the 2010 Major League Baseball World Champion San Francisco Giants. It showed that on Nov. 1, 2010, Tweets per minute spiked twice during the game. Once when Giants’ Edgar Renteria hit his three-run homer to give the Giants the lead, and again after the Giants clinched the championship. Here’s Twitter’s graph:

 

 Best Practices in Sports Social Media Promotion

 Twitter outlined several techniques that the Giants and other teams use to engage audiences, and several of them are easily adaptable to any sports social media promoter. Here are four things anyone can do to build interest in a sports team:

  1. Live-Tweet Events: use color commentary and live play-by-play
  2. Share pictures: show the team in transit to a game, pictures of the players, practices – anything to keep people in engaged. It is one thing to build excitement with words, another to build excitement with images: Twitter claims photos are the best way to promote an event.
  3. Break news: Even a little league team has news. Keep it appropriate, and don’t get your team disqualified like a mother did on Facebook, according to The Nashville Tennessean. Once you do that, it is OK to send out newsworthy information that will help fans engage with the game.
  4. Interact: talk directly to followers, and ask questions

Additional Steps for Pros

Of course, not everything in Twitter’s guide applies to every sports social media practitioner. Twitter also provided some tips that only apply to professionals responsible for getting butts in the seats. Here are three tactics Twitter identified:

  1. Connect to the larger conversation: It is just fine to mention other teams, athletes and high-profile sports figures, Twitter says. It gives your channel authenticity, and provides opportunities to promote
  2. Run a contest: As evidenced by the Fanatic Fans mobile application currently rolling out at Arizona State University, University of Denver and University of Grand Canyon home games, scoreboard contests tied to branded social media applications are the wave of the future. But that’s not to say you can’t run your own contest on Twitter. There are guidelines for running a contest on Twitter, but it is one heck of a way to engage your audience.   
  3. Make Twitter Actionable: Twitter says sports promoters can drive fans to buy seats, especially if a television blackout will occur if they aren’t gobbled up. Tweet on the day of the game and provide a link for buying seats, Twitter says. 
Filed Under: Sports Social Media, Twitter, Uncategorized Tagged With: ,
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