So as you may know, I am a gigantic LeBron James fan, and was very pleased to see him put the haters to rest by winning an NBA title.

He is the most polarized player in all of sports, there may be no other athlete or celebrity in the world that is scrutinized to the level of detail that LeBron James is. Last season he made it all the way to the finals with his new all star teammates – Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh and they were defeated by the Dirk Nowitzki lead Mavs. This just put gas on the fire for all of the LeBron haters, claiming he was a “choker” and wasn’t clutch in the fourth quarter. There isn’t a single “ringless”, or “fourth quarter” joke that you could come up with that I haven’t heard. I’ve heard them all.

I’m sure the haters will still persist with the Kobe and Jordan comparisons, and I’m fine with that. Fact of the matter is, for once LeBron shut up all the haters, and started the NBA season as the leagues best player and finished it as the league’s best player. He showed a new found maturity, a new level of focus, coupled with a strong post game and an absolute will to win.

Most Retweeted Sports Tweet of All Time

It is no secret, LeBron James has one of the best social media presences in all of sports, and the best in the NBA, but LeBron had not tweeted once throughout the NBA Playoffs, insinuating he was all business this year and completely focused on the championship. Not even 24 hours after he had won his first NBA Championship with the Miami Heat he broke his Twitter silence with this tweet:

OMFG I think it just hit me, I’m a CHAMPION!! I AM a CHAMPION!!

— LeBron James (@KingJames) June 22, 2012

As of this post at (6:13 PM EST on June 23) the post has been “NEW retweeted”  83,541 times and Favorited 25,471 times.
Using Sysomos a social media monitoring tool – including “OLD retweets” (People adding comments or context to the original tweet) the championship tweet has been retweeted a total of 91,500+ times.

This contributed 46.7 Million Impressions (sum of total followers of Retweeters).

By comparison Obama’s monumental tweet about Same Sex Marriage – accomplished around 62,000 retweets.

But upon research it is actually boxer: Floyd Mayweather who owns the most retweeted sports tweet calling out Manny Pacquiao with this tweet:

Manny Pacquiao I’m calling you out let’s fight May 5th and give the world what they want to see.

— Floyd Mayweather (@FloydMayweather) January 10, 2012

Which has an incredible total of 111,841 OLD and NEW retweets. This tweet also got a nice assist from Mr. Social Media himself – Justin Bieber – who walked Mayweather to ring and stood in his corner for his most previous fight vs. Miguel Cotto. Everyone that likes boxing or combat sports wants to see Mayweather vs. Pacquiao hence the number of retweets.

Contributing to 66.5 Million Impressions.

James still has a bit to go to knock out Mayweather with the top tweet, and I predict he will in the next week or so, and his tweet will be the most retweeted EVER.

At the end of the day, this shows that fans of sports can interact with their favorites athletes in all new ways. And although, it may not have been the same as attending the official Miami Heat after party, it was a way for fans to interact and congratulate him on his championship win.

Makes you wonder how many retweets Michael Jordan or Muhammad Ali would have gotten in their prime!

Note: the actual most retweeted tweet was a tweet by Wendy’s which gave .50 cents to charity for each retweet.. I disqualified them because it wasn’t an authentic retweet.

]]> http://kennynorton.com/2012/06/lebron-james-is-an-nba-champion-has-2nd-most-retweeted-sports-tweet-in-history-of-twitter/feed/ 0 http://kennynorton.com/2012/05/the-miami-heat-win-thescores-20112012-nba-social-playoffs-lebron-james-picks-up-first-championship-infographic/ http://kennynorton.com/2012/05/the-miami-heat-win-thescores-20112012-nba-social-playoffs-lebron-james-picks-up-first-championship-infographic/#comments Wed, 30 May 2012 22:50:59 +0000 kennynorton http://kennynorton.com/?p=710

I had the pleasure of working on a super fun infographic project at theScore – entitled the “NBA Social Playoffs”.

The general idea behind the infographic is simulating the NBA Playoffs based on social media communities.

Each round was decided by different social media requirements:

• First round: Total Facebook Likes on the team’s Facebook Fan Page
• Second round: Total Social Following which = Facebook Likes + Twitter Followers + Google Circles
• Third round: Twitter interactions = Tweets from the account, @replys from Twitter users and retweets
• Fourth round:  sum of player Twitter followers for each team

The Miami Heat come out on top lead by their incredibly engaged community and their big 3 headed dragon of Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh and the most polarized basketball player in the world - LeBron James.

Speaking of LeBron, as the infographic shows, he has the biggest collective audience of any player in the NBA – with over 16 million on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google+.

A couple of other interesting findings from the project were:

Kobe Bryant – Wasted potential: Kobe Bryant who joined Twitter for a couple of days, but cancelled it shortly after, was mentioned almost 11 million times (almost as many as LeBron) – Kobe could be a social beast, perhaps eclipsing LeBron James, but he chooses to stay away. And in this case, he cost the Lakers the NBA Social Playoffs.

Least wins in the league Charlotte Bobcats = Least connections in the league – with just over 166,000 total connections, the Charlotte Bobcats (who had the worst winning percentage in the history of the NBA this season) have the least amount of total connections on Facebook,  Twitter and Google+ (Which they’ve never made a post on). Good luck with that Anthony Davis- who has twice as many followers as the team most likely to select him in the draft.

2011/2012 Twitter Timeline: In addition to the simulation there is a timeline of tweets throughout the season. There were over 14.5 million tweets mentioning the term “NBA” throughout the 2011/2012 NBA Season. The most tweeted about moment of the regular season? NBA All-Star weekend in Orlando.

The NBA is the social king: Measuring an entire years worth of tweets using “Sysomos” – the NBA is miles a head of any major North American sports league with over 18.6 million tweets about “NBA”. When compared how many times “NHL” or “MLB” were mentioned it’s over 3 times the mentions. The NBA is truly the social king of sports leagues.

Will this be the only ring LeBron picks up this year? We shall see!

Have a look at the infographic and click through to theScore.com for even more cool facts from the infographic!

Credit: theScore.com

Linsanity

By now, it is likely you have heard of “Linsanity”. If you haven’t, Linsanity is the nickname that has been properly given to the young point guard for the New York Knicks – Jeremy Lin. Jeremy Lin is the first Chinese American basketball player to ever play in the NBA and the first Harvard Graduate to play in the NBA in over 60 years. In the absence of their two biggest stars (Carmelo Anthony and Amare Stoudamire) and a starting point guard, Lin has come off the bench to dominate the league and lead the Knicks to 7 straight wins. This type of performance in the NBA hasn’t been seen in years, and being on the grand stage of New York the nickname “Linsanity” is very appropriate.

The entire sports world, and anyone who follows pop culture has been buzzing. People have have also begun to use seemingly every opportunity to create their own Lin puns. Including:

“All I do is Lin”

“Linning”

“Just Lin-Credible”

“A Lin-Derella Story”

“Lin-Sane”

Among, many, many others.

On Va-Lin-Tines (see what I did there) February 14th, he came to Toronto and hit the game winner against the Raptors with his best and most heralded performance yet.

All was going smooth, and there wasn’t any obvious slip ups in the media until the Knicks and Lin were defeated by  the second worst team in the NBA the New Orleans Hornets. Lin continued his great play, but forfeited 9 turn overs in the loss ending the Knicks’ winning streak.

The Headline

Over this past weekend a “racy” headline snuck its way on to ESPN’s mobile website seen below. Immediately this caused an outrage of negative reaction across Twitter. There was another incident that occurred on ESPN radio and the headline even made it to TV as seen below:

ESPN TV Slip Up

ESPN Web Slip up

The Reaction

The reaction was extremely negative (and appropriately so) across the internet and the photos and videos began to spread like wildfire. To give you an idea of how many tweets about the issue were made I did a simple search in Sysomos for (Lin AND Headline AND ESPN) and that string alone pulled in almost 20,000 tweets (19,648) in the last two days. Using their reach approximation which is calculated by summing up the followers of users who tweet and we get 62.9 million potential people seeing tweets in their stream regarding the ESPN headline.

Some sample tweets from the twittersphere in reaction to the headline:

The Response

Although this was a disastrous thing for ESPN to have on their website or their network, they’ve handled it very well. Immediately pulling the headline, and issuing an apology from their twitter accounts and their official website.

This is the official response from ESPN (Link):

“Last night, ESPN.com’s mobile web site posted an offensive headline referencing Jeremy Lin at 2:30 am ET. The headline was removed at 3:05 am ET. We are conducting a complete review of our cross-platform editorial procedures and are determining appropriate disciplinary action to ensure this does not happen again. We regret and apologize for this mistake.”

They then posted this tweet to their 2.9 million followers. Note that the above tweet was re-tweeted over 1500 times (with a reach of over 4.6 million).

Side Note: One thing I will raise an eyebrow to is they didn’t post it to their Facebook community which has over double the community (6.6 million) and a much higher likelihood of people viewing the apology. However the tweet was shared around the internet and picked up by a variety of news outlets.

On Sunday – February 19 ESPN announced that the employee who posted the racist headline has been terminated.  It has also been announced that ESPN Anchor Max Bretos has been suspended for 30 days as a result to his usage of the pun on television.

What can we learn from this?

Because of the internet and social media it allowed the word to leak out at a rapid pace everyone seemed to be sounding off at the offensive headline. ESPN did what they could with social media and took down the content, fessed up and apologized publicly and ultimately fired the employee who was responsible. Where multiple online news outlets picked up the story, and included ESPN’s comments allowing the word to get out and defusing the obscurity around the whole situation. The way they took care of this situation is a testament to how PR is changing. Before Twitter, Facebook and blogs they would rely on major news outlets to pick the story up to clear up situations like this. Here, the whole situation was cleaned up before the 6 o clock news. Where a decade a go it could have taken weeks, or even months to have a similar impact. ESPN has shown the benefit of acting fast in PR to put a fire out, instead of letting it stew, and the story begin to take on a life of its own, they quickly took control of the situation by owning up and apologizing and pushing that message out to major news sources and their social media channels.

The major positive about this whole situation as a sports fan? We can all go back to enjoying the amazing play of Jeremy Lin and watch him continue to lead the Knicks without a recurring distraction.

How do you think ESPN handled this situation and would you have handled it differently?

Alright, so you just got a brand new iPhone. There are hundreds of thousands of apps in the app store, and it can be baffling to find truly useful apps that will be worth downloading. This is my list of 5 apps that I highly recommend and use every single day.

Tweetbot – Download | Website

Price: $2.99

Tweetbot is an iPhone Twitter client made by TapBots who have made a variety of other utility apps like: weightbot and others. I’ve tried every single reccomended Twitter client and have stuck with this one for the last 6 months.  Don’t be intimidated by the three dollar price tag. There are sales on it from time to time, so you can always wait, but $3.00 is merely the price of a venti coffee at Starbucks. For an app that you will use every day multiple times per day, I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

The interface is simple, intuitive and super easy to navigate. You can integrate bit.ly, receive push notifications (for @replys, DM’s and more). My favorite feature is the ability to do “old school” retweets where you can add context and comments to someone elses tweet, where most Twitter clients will only allow you to do the NEW retweets. There’s great notification noises as well. Great attention to detail. No Twitter client even comes close to this one.

ScoreMobile – Download | Website

Price: Free

Ok, full disclosure. I work at The Score, and even work closely with the guys on the ScoreMobile team, and even beta-tested the new ScoreMobile app. But a top app list for iPhone apps would not be complete without this app on the list. The interface is fluid, smooth and very intuitive.The key usage for ScoreMobile comes in to get up-to-the-second scores including the use of push alerts which will notify you of key moments of the game. There’s also the ability to follow all of your fantasy teams in the app to see their performance throughout the day. Also, if you’re a big sports nut (like myself) there’s extremely deep coverage of all the major sports (NHL, NFL, MLB, MMA and way more). Not going to say much more, but if you’re a sports fan this is the only app you need.

Starbucks – Download | Website

Price: Free

I did a post about this earlier this year. I’m a big fan of Starbucks mobile strategy, they’re really doing a great job of innovating in the mobile space. I use their app almost every day with pay for coffee. It doesn’t sound like that big of a deal, but I am.. wait for it.. Paying for Coffee .. WITH MY PHONE. This is the future, and I sincerely believe that we’ll be paying for everything with our phone. I can load up the card while I’m waiting in line using my Visa (attached to my account) and have never once had an issue. No rooting through your already bulging wallet (due to too many loyalty cards that you never use), just open the app, and flash it on the bar code reader. Not only that, but you’re rewarded for buying from Starbucks with loyalty points. Every 15 you get a free drink, better than buying 15 drinks at a competitor and not getting one. You can also find the closest Starbucks store with the store locator, and get all of the nutritional information on all of the drinks on the menu. Bravo to the Starbucks team for this app that in my opinion is before its time. Even if you don’t like Starbucks, download the app to view good design, and the future that is mobile payments.

Instagram – Download | Website

Price: Free

I have used Instagram a great deal in 2011. Outside of Twitter and Facebook this has been my favorite social network. Many people think that it’s merely a camera filter app, but there’s a giant community within it, where you can find photos of virtually anything. and follow users similar to how you would on Twitter, whenever they post/upload a new picture it will show up in your feed. You can then “like” images as you see fit, and the user will be notified that you have done so, similar to Facebook. The way the search engine works is when you take a picture you tag it with #hashtags similar to Twitter. When someone searches for “food” it will pull up any images that have food mentioned in the comments or were tagged with “food”. I’ve also been extremely impressed with the quality of photos that can be created using the filters on Instagram. With the announcement that they’re working on an Android solution, I think Instagram is going to blow up. Some predictions have said that they could even double their current user base. If you like to be visually stimulated, and also like to document your life in pictures, it’s a great app to have.

Flipboard – Download | Official Site

Price: Free

Now given this app just came to the iPhone in Mid-December, I’ve become very acquainted with this app. Flipboard was the king of content curators for the iPad and I have found myself very jealous of iPad users being able to view their content with this app, then finally they introduced it for iPhone users.  You can integrate your social accounts (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin etc.) and view different channels (Sports, News, Flipboard picks etc.) and essentially curates content for your viewing pleasure. You simply swipe with your finger and “flip” to the next piece of content. It’s extremely simple, visually stunning and also will have you sharing more content with your friends and twitter followers than you had thought imaginable.

There you have it my top 5 apps for the iPhone. I suggest you get all of them, and if you do, let me know what you think of each of them!

This morning I awoke with the great news that Starbucks Canada was going to begin to offer support for mobile payments in Canada. After Starbucks launched their “Gold Star” loyalty campaign a few weeks back in Mid-October, I’ve been waiting for an option like this, instead of having to use a clunky (unavoidable now a days) web interface, and also ensure that I have my loyalty card with me with every purchase. Not exactly convenient, especially when the balance runs out and you forget your password. There are plenty of failure points in this model (i.e losing the card, damaged card etc.)

Enter- the mobile app system. Now you can sync your Starbucks account/card to your iPhone once you download the app. It will only work on one phone at a time, and the whole app is quite simple, but very, very effective.

With the app you will get a run down of your balance. Which leads me to another point, you can actually add money to your Starbucks account on the fly. Which is very convenient. I was on my way to work, thinking about going to Starbucks and decided I would wait because I didn’t have a balance. As I was discovering the apps features, I had seen that the web app had saved my credit card, and I was able to load money on to my account in a matter of seconds. Something that would have taken me a good 5-10 minutes on the website, took me 5 seconds in the app. THAT is what mobile commerce is about. Convenience.

Other than the balance, you will also be able to click “Touch to pay” and it will display your Starbucks card bar code, in which any Starbucks Barista can scan just as they would any item in the store with a bar code. This is the only point in the process I think could be smoother, where I have to unplug my headphones, and pass my phone over to the Barista. I’m thinking a self serve option like a Mastercard “Pay Pass” might be the solution. It also didn’t help that it was the Barista’s first chance to scan one, so she was as confused as I was. But it worked out great.

Here’s a video demo of excactly what I did this morning (sans the Australian accent):

Overall the mobile payment process went over without a single hitch, and I was quite pleased with the experience.

Rewards Program

I mentioned the Starbucks Rewards program which has caught on quite well, I’ve found myself, co-workers and friends being even more loyal to Starbucks since the inception of the program to get the infamous “Gold card”. The Gold Card will get you many perks, including free coffee! With the new Starbucks app you can view how many points you have, which are accrued with 1 per purchase.

There are a few other features in the app, but most of them were already in the previous Starbucks Canada iPhone app. And none of them are as game changing as their new mobile payment loyalty program. I’ve never made a mobile payment before today, other than the obvious banking apps which was just savings to VISA. And I think many individuals who will sync the Starbucks app it will be their first crack at mobile payments. I think this app could be the beginning of a large movement in Canada to retire the infamous “Costanza” wallet full of loyalty and gift cards. Why not store them on your phone?

Tim Horton’s Tim Card

When Tim Horton’s launched the Tim Card it was a “head scratcher”. Why would I want to load money on to a card, and use it. Especially when most locations are now offering debit/master card. What do I get for doing it? There is no value proposition for the customer to re-fill a Tim Card. Starbucks has filled this void with the Starbucks Rewards program, and also given you no excuse not to with the new app (of course unless you don’t have an iPhone).

NFC

NFC (Near Field Communication) is rumoured to be a game-changer in the mobile payment space. Essentially it will be the self serve option that I mentioned above. You take your phone (with all of your information stored), tap the debit machine and away you go. Mobile payments currently are projected to rise to $240 billion in 2011 and potentially $1 Trillion by 2015. With a lot of that expected to come from Asia, most notably Japan and China (link ). Of course Canada is always well far behind in adopting similar technologies, so it may take even longer. However this Starbucks mobile payment system could be the beginning of a rise of mobile payments in Canada.

Augmented Reality

And as if this wasn’t earth shattering enough, Starbucks has been a trend setter in the news yet again today, with the launch of their new augmented reality holiday cups. For those that aren’t familiar with augmented reality, it’s essentially using the device to interact with the world around you in 3D, with graphics. It’s a really hot topic in the mobile world, and kudos to them for jumping at the opportunity.

Check out this video of their new “Starbucks Cup Magic” app. (Separate from the Rewards app).

There you have it, yet another game changing app for food/coffee establishments to marvel over. Whether people actually download and use this app is one question, the amount of earned media (PR/video views) they will get from this will be gigantic.

Crushing it

Remember when Starbucks had the doom and gloom surrounding them just a few years ago when they had to close over 600 stores in the US? They’ll be opening more than 500 new stores globally over the next fiscal. It’s because of things like their excellent “case study worthy” social media usage and the mobile development that I’ve mentioned here, why Starbucks is crushing it, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

I will end it on this note. Starbucks: You get it. And your competitors don’t.

Hey everyone, I have been slacking lately with my posts as of late, but I have some exciting news!

I’ll be honest, I’m  not a hardcore tennis fan, but I think you would have to be hiding under a rock in Toronto and have NOT heard of Milos Raonic ( @milosraonic )

Milos is the highest rated Canadian Men’s Singles Tennis player since they began tracking rankings in 1973, needless to say  he’s a very big deal when it comes to Canadian sports. And he’s TWENTY years old. Which is just freakish. He’s one of the best young athletes in the entire world right now and is garnering an international reputation.

Growing up, I followed Tennis pretty closely, always catching the big tournaments when they were on TV. The guy who dominated a large majority of  those tournaments, was Pete Sampras. The guy was a monster, finishing with a 762-222 record (77.1 % win percentage) and won 64 titles over his career (eat your heart out Ric Flair!). He’s largely considered one of the greatest tennis players of all time, but I think with those win percentages, he’s worthy of one of the greatest athletes of all time.

When I found out that Raonic and Sampras were going to square off in Toronto (Raonic’s hometown) at the Air Canada Center I was most likely going to attend, and now you can too. The people at SAP have given me a pair of tickets to give away to this must see event for any sports fan.

You can enter to win by simply commenting on this post stating why you would like to go. The drawing for the tickets will take place November 8th!

The actual event is Thursday, November 17 at  7PM EST in the Air Canada Center.

If you don’t win on this post you can always win tickets here on the SAP contest page. They also have some pretty cool training videos with Milos.

It should be an awesome event, and one to remember. Good luck and I look forward to seeing your comments!

EDIT: Hey guys, just a heads up. The tickets have been given away at random to Adam Zakrzewski ( @atomicz )

Thank you all for entering! All of your comments were great! Stay tuned for future contests!

I’ve come across a lot of recent conversations on Twitter, and amongst friends that rock n roll is dead. And that the current breed of music has been far out classed by previous generations several times over.

Now, from an overall perspective that could be true. But the purpose of this post is to provide 4 bands that I believe still can rock, and give great hope to the current state of rock music. Full disclosure: I play guitar and thus, I am an absolute sucker for guitar driven bands with screeching guitar solos.

The Sheepdogs

You may have heard of The Sheep Dogs as they recently have been getting a wide variety of earned media, due to their winning the “Rolling Stone” cover contest, where fans voted for their favorite independent band. The winner got the cover of Rolling Stone magazine and a record deal. The band has since blown up, going on tour with Kings of Leon this fall. The main comparison of this band is 70′s rock band “The Guess Who” and you can hear that comparison shine through on a lot of their songs off of their debut album “Learn and Burn”. I saw them play at Toronto’s BeerFest and they played an incredible show. What’s incredible is they sound just as good as they do live, as they do on their recordings.

Radio Moscow

I will admit I’ve only recently discovered Radio Moscow, but they have a strong similarity to “The Black Keys” who we will get to shortly, with a full band and more of a psychadelic 70′s feel than the Black Keys.What I mean, is the guitar tone and some of the solos sound VERY similar to that of Jimi Hendrix. I’ve seen a couple live videos, and they are incredible. This song: 250 Miles is one of the best jam songs I’ve heard in a while.

The Black Keys

I think if you’re in to rock and roll you’ve heard of The Black Keys. For a two piece band (for most songs) they’re freaking incredible. My only qualm with them is that their songs are in almost every single video game and every single car commercial, I realize they need to make some money, but there needs to be a cut off point, where your music stops losing its appeal because you hear it everywhere. The video below a clip from their show in Toronto this passed July. Really shows they have an intensity a la the White Stripes. Incredible performers.

Taddy Porter

I discovered these guys from an episode of Entourage. They’re completely high octane, very similar to an AC/DC or Van Halen type sound. The lyrics are “cheesefactory” and I love it. If you like high tempo bands who aren’t afraid to shred with a wah-wah pedal these guys are definitely worth checking out.

The Trews

I’m a little biased here, as they have gone commercial. Even after purchasing their most recent album I was a little bummed that weren’t any real pure rock songs that I loved. They may have gone a little soft for their new albums, but their live show is still top notch. I’m also pretty sure they’ve almost played every possible venue in Canada at least once. I’ve seen them live 4 different times, and every time incredible.

I’m confident John-Angus MacDonald could out guitar dual any mainstream guitarist going today. And Colin is one of (if not THE) the best Canadian front men going. Just watch this video below.. it’s intense. I could watch it 100 times in a row.

And there you have it. 5 Bands to throw in your friend’s faces whenever they say “rock n roll is dead”. Here’s a playlist with all of the songs if you want to listen to them all on loop.

Have any other bands that you think reek of Rock n’ Roll, feel free to throw them in the comments!

Ok, maybe this title is a little too polar, I can’t guarantee you are going to fit in. But from my times in many internships and working at a variety of new businesses, it’s one of the best tricks I’ve picked up and its almost flawless in terms of fitting in with a new crowd and gaining their approval.
It’s this simple: when you’re not overloaded with new work, or training, ask this simple question to anyone and everyone on your team:

“Is there anything that I can help you out with?”

This question goes a long, long way in gaining approval. Especially when the individuals have a lot of work on their plate, and would love a helping hand. Even if they don’t, it goes a long way to show initiative.

I picked this up after my first internship, where the organization clearly didn’t have a whole lot of work lined up for me and found myself bored out of mind throughout the day, so what did I do? Not knowing I begrudged, and continued to do nothing. Then my first review came up, and I asked for feedback from my boss, and he said, we need you to be more proactive. From that day forward, whenever I didn’t have a project I was working on, I asked for work with someone else, and eventually my plate began to get fuller, the days went by quicker and I got much more experience (which is the ultimate goal of an internship isn’t it?), and my co-workers began to get to know me better and open up to me more once I had gained their respect. You can’t lose, what’s the worse they can say? “I don’t have anything, but thanks for asking!” They’ll appreciate and respect you for it, whether they have something or they don’t.

Whenever I start a new job, or do work with a different organization it’s the number one thing I keep in the back of my mind. Whenever I have no work to do, I make myself useful. And this is something I will do for the rest of my life. I’m actually baffled how many people will come into an organization, sit at their desk and do nothing (aka surf the web, text, etc) until the work comes to them, instead of offer themselves as a helping hand to break the ice.

If you’re an intern or even a new hire who has a little too much time on their hands, a little help (or initiative) goes a long way.

With over 200 million tweets per day, Twitter has officially solidified  itself as a social media juggernaut. For those that were skeptics of social media as a tool that will stick, Twitter’s sheer adoption has pretty much put all of them to rest. I’ve been a frequent user of Twitter for roughly 2 years now, and it has changed many facets of my life, the biggest impact being the thing I am most passionate  about; sports. You may be wondering: “how could Twitter have a big impact on sports?” The answer is easy: constant connection and frequent updates from everyone and anyone (well metaphorically). It’s actually a little more complexed than that, as we have seen a gigantic shift in advertising communications, there has also been a tremendous shift in the way we watch sports.

Would I have enjoyed Colorado's Stanley Cup wins more in the post Twitter-era?

Connecting with like minded passionate fans

Growing up in the 1990′s I was a huge fan of the Montreal Canadians in the Patrick Roy era, watching him literally steal game after game for the Habs. He soon became my favorite player, and when he was abruptly traded to the Colorado Avalanche in 1994, my fan-dom went with him to Colorado. Colorado went on to win the cup that year, and it was unbelievable. The one big caveat being, I was a Nova Scotia kid, and I didn’t know any other Colorado Avalanche fans. It’s never been easier to connect with like-minded fans, all you need to do is type in to Twitter, or your favorite Twitter Dashboard (i.e Tweetdeck), the #hashtag of your favorite team and instantly you have an ongoing stream of passionate fans, that you can engage, be-friend, banter, converse or debate with. It’s truly incredible, how small the world becomes on Twitter, especially with sports.

Humanizing Players

Twitter has allowed players to truly show their personalities. This can be a PR dream or a nightmare. Depending on the player. NHL goon Paul Bissonette has made it look easy, tweeting about anything and everything. He’s built his personal brand from it allotting over 105,000 followers. For a player that’s played 89 career NHL games and totaled 6 career points, he’s managed to be one of the most discussed players in the NHL on Twitter, and even had a spot on the NHL on TSN for a week, not too shabby.  Some other notable examples of athletes on Twitter include:

Shaq’s retirement – Live on Twitter

Paul Bissonette – Absolute hilarity

Gilbert Arenas – live tweets blind date gone wrong

Matt Duchene – tweets about excitement of playing with Peter Forsberg during his comeback last year

Dwight Howard – gives away 100 copies of NBA Live 10

LeBron James’ retaliation to Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert – “Carma is a B***”

Regulated or Non-regulated?

As you can see with some of the examples above, it is allowing fans to interact with players like never before, and step in to the personal life of athletes like never before. This brings us to the argument of, does their need to be regulation? Or should players be rewarded, and encouraged to to create a closer connection with fans. Dana White CEO of the UFC has instituted a bonus system for fighters . While other leagues like the NBA and MLB have strict codes of conduct in place, where players can receive fines and even suspensions. For instance Brandon Jennings recieved a $7000 fine for simply tweeting his pleasure of winning a double over-time game. The caveat, being he hadn’t talked to the media yet. Truly not in the spirit of social media. Perhaps that’s a reason why the NBA’s in lockout. Might I add if any NBA coach interacts with a player in the NBA lockout, there will be a $1million fine. It’s truly a cruel digital world we live in!

Live Tweeting – Up to the second news

If you’re an avid Twitter user, you most likely find breaking news before it’s broadcast on television or even your favorite news website. That same attribute is only larger on Twitter, you’ll find more breaking injury reports, fan pics, trade rumors, statistics, breaking trades. Information that just isn’t said on a live broadcast of a game. For instance TSN analyst Bob Mckenzie posted the first details of the Dany Heatley / Martin Havlat trade  . This sort of thing happens every single day in the sports world, long gone has waiting for ESPN or TSN to tell you when the trades have gone down, you can get them before they do, that is, if you follow the right people.

Some fans will also create quick clips of highlights, or “must-see” moments from the game. As I’ve heard many sports fans say before, it just adds so much value, watching sports without twitter just isn’t the same.

Raptors Tweet Zone

An example of the fan experience that I was part of this passed year was the Raptors Tweet Zone, where like-minded passionate Raptors fans used the “#RTZ” hashtag and engaged with Raptors fans across the country. And lucky fans even won tickets to the game. When not at the game you could always rely on tweets from the #RTZ crew to convey the fan reactions, pictures, videos from inside the stadium. Adding a different dimension to the game. I believe other teams have followed suit with a social media zone, and soon enough I believe every team in every league will have one just like it.

ROI

Another question that is always asked with social media is: “What is the ROI”?!?!?!. The ROI in sports I think is more tangible than most industries as it creates a more passionate fan base. Passionate fans spend more money on their teams, hence the ROI. It should be a no brainer for sports teams to heavily invest in social media. The life time value of a sports fan is HUGE.

Summary

In summary,  Twitter has changed the way I follow sports. It’s also made me an even bigger fan than ever before, and I believe that barrier between fan and team or player will only continue to become smaller.   I also think, part of being a “superstar” will be to have a solid presence on Twitter or social media. As mentioned in one my recent posts , the NHL’s biggest star – Sidney Crosby is completely absent.  I would love to hear your thoughts of how Twitter has changed sports for you, and whether you think tweeting should be regulated by the owners or not.

Erik Qualman, author of my favorite social media book “Socialnomics” is back with another rendition of his very well known infographic video “Social Media Revolution”. This is part 3, with some very new and insightful statistics, but also some very familiar ones as well. I’m thinking if you attend any social media conference in the near future this one will be on high rotation. Some interesting stats that I found I’ve highlighted below:

• Facebook now tops Google in Weekly traffic in the US
• 95% of companies that use social media for recruitment use Linkedin – they have this on lockdown
• Lady Gaga (11.3 million), Justin Bieber (10.6 million) and Britney Spears (8.3 million) have more followers than Greece (11.2 million), Sweden (9.3 million) and Israel (7.4 million)
• 50% of the mobile traffic in the UK is from Facebook
• In 2013, social gamers are expected to spend $6 billion. Movie goers are expected to spend $2 billion.

Some absolute staggering and exciting stats for the future and present state of social media.

Let me know what you think in the comments!