In Brief: Twittering

I need to catch up on some thoughts in shorter form and rather than do my usual ridiculously long article, I’m going to keep them shorter. Almost like blog posts. Almost.

Twitter is awesome.

Okay, in terms of the new era of fan interaction it’s awesome. What bugs me is how we try and characterize this new medium into two rash generalizations. Just like blogs. There’s criticism that all twitters are banal and trite. Just like blogs. And don’t get me wrong, there’s a fair amount of “at home, watching tv” and “OMG, Britney is SO awesome” and even “LeBron James is really good.”  JUST LIKE BLOGS. But there’s also a lot of interesting things going on and it can be a great tool for a variety of societal spheres. Personally, I love it because it allows me to make notes on what happens in a game without committing to a liveblog or doing a game notes post if I’m flipping through.

So while it’s fine to criticize when there’s something you deem ridiculous, let’s not toss out the whole medium.

I gotta say, though, it’s pretty awesome how NBA players have embraced Twitter and a  chance to interact with fans on their terms.  Because 90% of the time, they’re so overloaded by interactions with wild-eyed fans bugging them at restaurants or after games when they’re exhausted, they can’t really interact. Throw in the draw of groupies and you’ve got the perception that players don’t care about fans that don’t have humongous breastseses. But with Twitter, it gives them a way to interact that’s not intrusive.

Paul Pierce has no reason to be giving away tickets. It doesn’t get him anything. People are going to love you whether you reply on Twitter or not. You hit shots, you are the man. So it’s not like it’s a marketing effort. Yet we’re seeing athlete’s take an hour out of their day to reply to Twitter @s.

I do get concerned, though. Pierce drove up to hand tickets personally to players. Other players are routinely tweeting their location. There are a LOT of psychos out there. That could be a bad combination one of these days.

As far as V-Nuv’s halftime, I think it’s awesome. What’s stunning is that even though the comment was completely stock, nothing shocking, it was still a big deal. I mean, all he twitted was the same thing he would have told a halftime reporter. Here’s a shortlist of worse things he could have written on twitter:

“We’re down, but I’m still getting paid, so who cares?”

“The guy I’m guarding smells like korean food and a failed science experiment. I think I’ll drift to the perimeter.”

“I would care more about this game if I wasn’t playing for Milwaukee.”

“I know I SHOULD stop shooting 18 footers, but that’s just not how I jive.”

I’m just saying.