Twitter might be a cool and fun way for NFL fans to get in touch with their favorite teams and players, but the ad hoc “Twitter chats” sponsored by Verizon Wireless leave a lot to be desired, mainly due to the poor manners of the Twittersphere.
On Tuesday night Verizon Wireless and its NFL Mobile application sponsored a chat with Washington Redskins linebacker Brian Orakpo, otherwise known as @rak98 on Twitter. The half-hour long chat, which fans could find by either following Orakpo directly or by using the hashtag #NFLMobile, was almost instantly filled with spam Tweets, typically ones of a sexual nature with links to some godforsaken unknown location… which we didn’t click on.
Of the Tweets that did get through to Orakpo, the ones he chose to answer were pretty harmless — ones about “how frustrating is it when people hold you” or “what kind of victory dance will you do when you score a touchdown.” There were a couple that hinted at Orakpo’s personality — turns out his sports heroes include Michael Strahan and Hakeem Olajuwon — but since Orakpo forgot to include the #NFLMobile hashtag on several posts it was hard to follow the “chat” thread, especially with all the spam in between.
And though I tried hard, I couldn’t get Orakpo to answer a couple tweet questions I sent in — apparently they were either too controversial (I asked him if the ‘Skins were solidly behind QB Rex Grossman, someone who us Chicago Bears fans have few fond memories of) or too wordy — I also asked what Orakpo thought of the new tackling rules, a question I later realized couldn’t really be answered in 140 characters or less. So maybe I am as lame as the chat. So we’ll both learn going forward.
But it sure is a challenge to wade through the spam tweets. Not sure if the spam is standard fare for these chats, but with all its dough can’t Verizon get together with Twitter and find a way to keep the crap out of the chat? Otherwise these things are going to die a quick death and that would be unfortunate. Especially if it happens before I get one of my Tweets answered.
