Now that we've discussed the serious questions of collage basketball, I asked my fellow Big East bloggers about communication - do they use Twitter? Twitter has become the way that athletes get in trouble for being prima donnas and jerks, where they make the off-color jokes no one ever told them were not funny, and where reporters break news or add pithy commentary. 140 words is a tiny limit, but as a device to let readers know when something hot is going on... maybe it has some merit.
Orange 44 (Syracuse) - O44
Hoya Prospectus (Georgetown) - HP
I Bleed Blue and White (Villanova) - IBBW
Villanova by the Numbers - VBTN
Eye of a Panther (Pittsburgh) - EoP
Black and Green Irish Blog (Notre Dame) - B&G
Chicago College Basketball (DePaul) - CCB
Rumble in the Garden (St. John's) - RITG
There are 7 questions in total in the roundtable, and they will be up in the next day. It's a big league, after all, and large group of participants. Enjoy, spread on the message boards and forums, and comment freely (but with civility). Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 were published earlier, go take a look!
Q. Twitter has become influential in broadcasting basketball/ sports information. What's your opinion of the service? Have you adopted Twitter for your blog? What have been the pluses and minuses?
IBBW: I was the most anti-Twitter blogger you could find at it’s outset. But then after watching it on SportsCenter every morning, I realized it was here to stay. It’s a great way to get updates from people and news outlets you are interested in without having to click refresh every 10 minutes. I’m welcomed Twitter on IBBW and I’ve found that I’ve been able to reach a bigger group of people.
O44: I had been really down on twitter until around last May, when every blogger friend of mine basically demanded I jump on Twitter. I took the New York Bar Exam this summer, so once that was concluded I joined Twitter (@BH_Orange44). So far it has been great, especially during the Orange football debut this past weekend. I was tweeting from the Carrier Dome, and following several friends as we all shared in the collective experience of watching the game. A lot of fun. The plusses are that you have instant interaction and can pass along comments and news instantly. Even faster than a live blog. It is boiled down to good, simple information due to the character limit. The minuses are that it can limit you if you have something long and relatively important to say. Also, while trying to keep up with tweets you are not really paying close attention to the game, which can defeat the whole purpose of your afternoon.
HP: Twitter serves a purpose - spontaneous thoughts, breaking news, etc., but the wheat/chaff ratio can be frustrating. We haven't adopted Twitter for our blog as we normally don't break news and aren't very spontaneous. Other Hoya blogs with boots on the ground use it, to better purpose than we ever could.
VBTN: I like it, though I use it only "situationally". I followed the World University Games via twitter, having the final scores hours before they were published by the news services. I have not adopted it for Villanova by the Numbers. In the days before I actually began the blog I spent time considering what I wanted to accomplish with VBTN. I decided to focus on the numbers, the state of the team (and program...and the game), more on the "play" rather than the "players". Twitter is more valuable to me as a "news source/news alert" for events that I know will not get a lot of media attention initially.
B&G: Twitter is decent for sports reporting, but I've had such an aversion to it due to its usage as a tool for reporting every aspect of one's rather uninteresting life. I don't have an account and likely never will.
CCB: I really like Twitter (@Chicolball). I think that it allows you to share short opinions and links that you would normally write about. While most college basketball coaches use it as a way to broadcast boring messages, some of the good coaching Tweeters actually give relevant information.
EoP: I'm not personally a Twitter fan, but I'm surprised at how much actual news is broken there. It makes sense for athletes and celebrities because they can spread news without having to run a website or go through the media. Other than that, I'm not sure I 'get it.' I don't use Twitter - I'm not sure I'm important enough to have people 'follow me.' And while I like the idea of athletes telling me what's going on during a game, not sure why their coaches would allow it. I'm also amazed that athletes will 'spill the beans' on Twitter while giving nondescript answers during interviews.
RITG: I am on Twitter and have found it very useful; it brings eyes from the East Coast Bias twitter page to the blog and allows me to write "micro" posts when a full blog posts seems indulgent and unseemly. The minus is that Twitter becomes another online location to check, and in truth, I still think it’s kind of silly. It really tends towards some of the dumber aspects of people's communication, trolls, nasty one-sided invective... it ain't deep. But then, some things are best when succinct.