By Chandler Harris, Assistant Sports Editor
The day has come. The day that every coach feared and every fan longed for. The day when a player could interact with fans on a personal level in the middle of a sporting event. Thanks, Twitter.
Twitter, a social networking site, was founded in 2006 and uses short messages, similar to text messages, to update a user’s status and communicate information through text and pictures to a network of people, much like a Facebook status. It quickly has grown in popularity and boasts more than 6 million users.
The service is free, and many celebrities and athletes have used Twitter as a way to communicate with their fan bases. The ability for athletes to interact with their fans has dwindled in the past few years, especially as security concerns have grown since 9/11. Twitter, however, has provided a forum for fans to know exactly what athletes are doing or where they are at any given moment. It allows fans to learn more about the interests of athletes outside of their respective sports.
Twitter officially arrived on the sports scene March 15 at halftime of the Celtics-Bucks NBA game. Bucks forward Charlie Villaneuva decided to send the first ever, in-game tweet: “In da locker room, snuck to post my twitt. We’re playing the Celtics, tie ball game at da half. Coach wants more toughness. I gotta step up.” Following the tweet, Villanueva scored 11 of his team-high 19 points in the fourth quarter to lead the Bucks past the defending champs 86-77. Villanueva’s coach Scott Skiles was not too thrilled about his player’s willingness to share the locker room with the world and banned twittering from the locker room.
Despite the ban, Villanueva constantly updates his Twitter, even replying directly to fans’ personal tweets. The incident caused a media firestorm, and Villanueva received national attention, so much so that his followers on Twitter went from 1,600 to 14,781 as of March 31.
Other notable athletes on Twitter include basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal and cultural icon Lance Armstrong. O’Neal, using the username ‘THE_REAL_SHAQ,’ frequently updates his whereabouts and even gives out free tickets to Phoenix Suns’ games to those who can find him around town and touch him.
On March 26, Shaq tweeted: “Anybody in portland touches me rt now will get two tickets I’m at redstar café.” Sure enough, seven minutes later, three of his followers found him, and he tweeted: “And the winner is @cbakes and @dondondon and @mmirkil.”
Twitter allows fans to get to know their favorite athletes in a way unlike any other. When receiving a tweet from an athlete, it is almost as if they had the fan in mind when they sent it. In some cases, they tweet about their careers before even the press gets ahold of a story, such as Lance Armstrong, who tweeted about his recent injury after falling off his bike and even posted a picture, so his followers could get his account of the accident.
Even if sports is not your forte, Twitter is a powerful tool with hundreds of uses, with new ones being discovered every day. Twitter is growing, and the usefulness for this type of social networking tool is apparent in its popularity.
While I am not Shaq or even in the NBA, I plan on making a splash of my own by tweeting during halftime of my next intramural game. Follow me at: ‘@chandlerharris’ and maybe I can entertain you without getting in trouble with my coach. Just do not ask me for tickets.
