One of the best sites on the web for sports things digital is Pat Coyle's Sports Marketing 2.0, and they recently did a summary on the NFL Draft and teams use of twitter to actually break news (which was also put together by the Sports Business Daily). As brands and athletes jump to the twitter bandwagon, it shows that the technology may have an immediacy that others do not have for exclusive news distribution. Keeping in mind that it was less than three years ago when the Toronto Maple Leafs were vilified for breaking news on their website...now common practice in many places and the only place athletes like Tiger Woods send media for the latest news…the immediacy of Twitter remains intriguing, more for its news value than to know what Charlie Villanueva is doing in a halftime lockerroom or what miscellaneous WPS players are having for breakfast. Now of course there is still no way to make money off of Twitter, and it still remains that those using it look at messages and then get rid of em, but maybe in those 120something characters a sponsor mention creeps in to justify the spend, time and effort and the passalong value can grow exponentially. Now would it have been great to have Carl Edwards twitter that he was OK after his crash at Talladega, or Dikembe Mutombo twitter from the lockerroom that his career was done after he injured his knee last week, but the fact that teams used the service to allegedly break news before picks were made can be the most interesting development to date, and would be a real reason to sign up as opposed to the ramblings of miscellaneous folks looking for another place to “voice.” The latest mainstream news site to look at the Twitter phenominon was Sunday's New York Daily News, with a piece by Ebenezer Samuel.
Some other good reads…WSJ.com had a worth reading excerpt from the upcoming book “Shooting For Tiger”...Charlotte Magazine had a good indepth look at the real reasons why Stephan Curry was going into the NBA Draft… Brian Gainor's Partnership Activation blog had a really smart piece on the “Ford Pickup” window the Celtics and Bruins use…great “little extra” for a partnership…and Todd Civin's Bleacher Report blog had a nice piece on how a local teacher incorporates the Red Sox into her grading…
