Twitter thoughts

Twitter is great for news and quick updates (injuries, etc). It's also great for posting links.

The thing I hate is when people tweet too much detail during a game.

Everytime you tweet something during a game, think: "If someone sees this an hour from now, two hours from now, will it mean anything to him?" I hate tweets like "What a play" that just assume you are watching the game while reading twitter. Even a tweet like "Joe Shmo warming up in the bullpen serves a purpose for about 5 minutes."

Also, I don't mind occasional personal tweets ("why do I always get the fat guy next to me on the plane?") to share your personality with readers, but you have to be very judicious about what's too much.

Lastly, if people tweet you questions, I usually just reply directly unless it's a question I think a lot of my followers care about. If you RT to all, it just fills up people's feeds with a lot of stuff.

 

Exactly.

 

This is hilarious.

Will Carroll (formerly of Baseball Prospectus) just tweeted a shot at Butch Walker (my all-time favorite musician). Within 10 minutes Butch had retweeted it and laughed at it on Twitter for as long as 140 characters allows. Then Butch's fans started jumping all over Will Carroll.

This is the funniest, most unexpected, Twitter fight I've ever seen. Partly b/c I find Will Carroll to be a douche on Twitter and Butch is one of the most engaging, passionate people I've ever come across, and Carroll called him the opposite. And partly b/c what Butch knows about sports can fit in a tweet, so I'm surprised he even saw the Will Carroll tweet (since it wasn't an @).

I wrote this: With his tweet about @ButchWalker, @injuryexpert has proven he knows less about music than Butch does about sports!

Carroll resopnded with this: You can kiss butt on twitter. Who knew?

Which makes absolutely no sense, because I was mocking him and tweaking Butch at the same time. But as I said, he's a douche.

 

Cool story, bro.

 

The only athletes I follow on Twitter are cyclists and they are for the most part a very very entertaining bunch...and when the winner of the Tour de France retweets something you posted, it's a really cool feeling...but I imagine 2-3 years from now Twitter will be taken over by the PR types and the fun will be gone.

 

I will admit I have become addicted to Twitter. I use it for a variety of things. I'll link to my blog, I'll use it for game updates (trying to limit them as much as possible, because I know how annoying play-by-play can be) and I'll use it to have conversations with the fans of the teams I cover.

I use it to talk to other sports journalists. I've made a few connections that way that have been really helpful.

I have fun with it, and I'd like to think those who follow me can see that. I try not to argue with fans, that's just as bad as exchanging e-mails with them.

The one thing I always try to avoid is political discussions or links to stories about political issues. You can get some nuts fired up in a hurry doing that.

I always look at it this way — if people don't like what I have to say, or I annoy them, they don't have to follow.

I know I won't be live-tweeting the Missouri Valley Football Conference teleconference anymore.

 

I know the mods never buy this, but this place is a utopia of bipartisan civility compared to 99.99999 percent of the Internet.

 

Well....

 

Now THAT is one of the truest statements ever.

Twitter is like a loaded gun. In the wrong hands, it can be dangerous.

 

If anyone questions the use of Twitter, start tracking the number of clicks the links you post get. I use goo.gl and find it's pretty good for tracking those things. Some of those people may have seen your story in print or come across it online anyway, but it's been a great tool for driving traffic for parts of the site, particularly my blog.