The internet is one of the easiest ways to access information in the sports world. With one click of a button, you can get updates on scores, injuries, news, trades, and basically anything that you want. The article titled, Sports Online, the New Player in Mediasport states, "From its explosive development in the last decade of the twenieth century, the World Wide Web has become an ideal medium for the dedicated sports fanatic and a useful resource for even the casual fan" (Real 171). This entire article talks about fans accessing sports news online. Now, fans can connect with their favorite players and teams in a whole new way.
Social networking on the internet has grown greatly in the past couple of years. Starting with MySpace.com and eventually Facebook.com, and now Twitter.com. None of the social networking sites have impacted the sports world like Twitter has in the last year. It seems like everyone is on Twitter these days. This article (http://http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=3990853), takes Twitter to a whole new level. Charlie Villanueva of the NBA, tweeted during halftime of a game. This is crazy, in my opinion. His coach, Scott Skiles reprimanded him because of this. In class, we have talked about players in the NFL doing this during games and we also read an article about how the head coach of Texas Tech football team banned his players from using Twitter. I think Twitter is pretty cool. You can follow some of your favorite athletes and see what they are up to in their daily lives. Personally, I follow Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant on Twitter (if it is really their accounts and not someone just making stuff up about them). I think this is great for athletes to use OFF THE COURT. I think it is crazy for an athlete to update his twitter at any time during a game. Personally, I think during a game, a players only focus should be on the game. After all this is what they are getting paid for. I have always believed that during the game a player should avoid all distractions that can hurt his or her performance. By tweeting during half-time, I think this could cause a major distraction. In fact, I think all professional sports leagues should ban their players from using Twitter during games. Villanueva tweeted during or right after his coaches half-time speech. Some things that coaches say during their speech, they do not want the rest of the world to hear. If a player is tweeting during this speech they could be upset with the coach and post something on Twitter that the coach said. This could possibly get the coach in trouble which is not fair. What is your opinion on players tweeting during the game? Do you think professional sports league should all ban players from using Twitter on the sidelines or in the locker room during a game?
In the article titled, Making Room in the Lineup: Newspaper Web Sites Face Growing Competition for Sports Fans' Attention, it says, "The growth of Web sites related to sport is a definite boon for consumers of sport information. Fans have easy access to stories, pictures, and other media related to their favorite teams" (Butler and Sagas 24). Like I said before, fans love to get updates on their favorite teams and players. Twitter gives different types of updates as fans can get information from their favorite players' personal lives which is pretty cool. Twitter is a very interesting web site and I think that is is a good web site. I just think that players need to seperate using Twitter for their personal lives and playing their sport. Twitter should not be used during sporting events by the players.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
The use of the internet to expand the sporting world, in my opinion, has been one of the greatest advances we have seen within sports for a very long time. Opening up its fans to 24/7 access to their favorite sports teams, athletes, etc, whether they are looking up stats from a game they may have missed, to even learning more about their favorite athletes off the field, the internet has allowed a lot more interaction for the fans to have with their teams. They can have their own blogs where they are able to put their own ideas out there for other fans to interact with. We clearly see a rapid growth of interest in fans for online sporting events within the article "Sports Online: The Newest Player in Media Sport" by Michael Real, especially with the statistic of how the number of visitors to the Super Bowl Web Site nearly tripled in only 2 years, from the 2001 game to the 2003 game. The numbers may still have been on the smaller side, but the growth is so rapid that if this continues every year, the numbers for the Web site access could eventually close in on the number of television viewers (Real 174). I found it interesting in the Butler and Sagas article "Making Room in the Lineup" how Newspaper websites are trying to create revenue by attracting sports fans to their pages and come up with ways to keep them returning to their website (Butler and Sagas 18). Also, how "The growing similarities between newspapers’ sports Web sites and fan sites can lead to increased competition for fans’ attention and advertising revenue" (Butler and Sagas 18). So as the internet becomes more popular, newspaper companies are now being forced to compete with fans websites, those of who these fans they are trying to persuade to continue reading their own websites for sports information, along with everyday news. If the internet is allowing more power to the fans, will the bigger sports and newspaper websites take a large hit from it?
ReplyDeleteI had began to hear about Twitter at the beginning of this year and really did not have any interest in it. It seemed to be a way for celebrities to allow their fans into their lives more and have them feel as if they were more involved if they were able to know their favorite celebrity or athletes every move. I think that athletes having a Twitter account is a really new and unique way for their fans to connect with them on another level, but twittering during a game is completely ridiculous. Would an athlete get up and call a radio station after their coaches half time speech and tell them it was "stupid," or something else? No, so why should they be able to display their feelings on the world wide web. It is just disrespectful to their coach and also their fans. If these players are serious about their teams, they should be concentrating on playing and not on Tweeting their feelings about their coach in the middle of a game.
Twitter has changed the way people can interact with each other, celebrities and athletes especially. Now people are able to know exactly what their favorite athlete is thinking or doing. This is a neat way for fans to better understand athletes and learn more about them outside of the game. However I agree with Mike that there is a time and a place. Athletes should not be Tweeting during games or practices.
ReplyDeleteThey are being played to play a game and their attention should be only focused on the game. They should not be thinking about rushing to their phones so they can Tweet their opinions about a coach’s decision or a teammates mistake. By doing that it just takes players focus away from the game. These players have enough going on during games that they should not be worrying about updating their Twitter accounts.
It can also be harmful to a team’s moral if players are viewing each other’s Twitter updates during games. If one player were to Tweet that he was upset with a teammates play and the other teammate saw this update he could become upset and there would be tension. Again there is enough going on during the games that these players do not need any additional distractions.
In Michael Real’s Sports Online article he explains how sports have grown and fans are able to interact in my more ways with the development of the internet. The money being made on these online web sites proves that sports online sells: “By that time, annual income from advertising on sports-themed web sites was expected to approach $2.4 billion” (Real 172). This shows that sports on the web is a major market and fans enjoy looking up stats, watching games, and learning more about players on the web. This is why I think athletes using Twitter is interesting because fans are able to relate on a new level but it should not happen during games.
As most of us have conquered, the internet has become the main source of news in the new century. I am a communication major, and most of my classes have talked about that in 10 years from now print journalism will barely exist, if at all. Unfortunately, this is the society we live in today. It is so much easier for a person to take news and post it on a website (rather then waiting to get it published the next day in the newspaper). I have been receiving my sports news on a number of websites for years. I cant even remember the last time i bought a newspaper to read about sports. "From 1995 through 2004, newspapers started to build and expand Internet Web sites as a way to reach readers" (Butler and Sagas 17). However, even though they might have expanded their respective sites, it still doesnt change my opinion on newspaper based websites. Everyday, i can wake up at my leisure, and get my news from my bed when i wake up. This is due to the internets " accessibility, interactivity, speed, and multimedia content are triggering a fundamental change in the delivery of mediated sports" (Real 171). Also, sports sites like rotoworld.com update player news up to minute, which is something a newspaper cant do.
ReplyDeleteHowever, with the new found obsession with twitter, i have become disgusted with athletes. I understand why young kids would want to know what their favorite athletes are up to, But as a young adult its quite disturbing. Why would i care what my favorite athlete is doing at all times of the day? Personally, all i care is how they perform on game day. As i look at hoopshype.com, there is a section with up to the minute twitter updates from NBA players. The leading "tweeters" are Shelden Williams, Chris Douglas-Roberts, and Stephon Marbury (Dont even get me started on him). These players are either unproven or retired. All this tells me is there desperate cry for attention. Marbury is border line insane (literally), Shelden Williams might be the biggest bust as a number 5 pick since 2000, and Chris-Doulas Roberts is on the come up but really how many people know who he is (he plays for the nets!).
This is my problem with twitter, i think the internet craze has gotten so out of hand. To me it seems like athletes are more worried about attention and a celebrity lifestyle, then the game itself. I mean common look at Lamar Odom, he married Khloe Kardashian after knowing her for a month. Why else would players update there twitters every hour? So they can attract an X number of followers a day? Its time that athletes start worrying about what they get paid to due. The fact that Charlie Villanueva "tweeted" during halftime is rediculous. Why is someone of his stature even thinking about twitter. Your playing an NBA GAME! You get paid to do play the game, not to update your followers on twitter!
Overall, I think that the internet as the number one source of news is here to stay. Its much more accessible and quicker to obtain such news, rather then waking up everyday for your local newspaper. To consider Twitter news is a joke. The obsession with it is absurd and such followers need something else to do with their time. We didn't fall in love with sports based on what are favorite athletes are doing on their off time. We fell in love with the sport based on how they perform? Todays athletes off time is exactly that, off time! Whatever you may do during that time great, but i don't want to know. This just goes to show how our generation is to blame for such things like twitter. Its time to go back to the basics, and start liking athletes for how they play, not based on what a lavish lifestyle they live (CASE CLOSED).
The internet has become an integral part of the sports fan’s day. Between checking stats, scores, headlines, injuries, and fantasy results, it would be hard for a true fan to stay away for an extended period of time. The internet provides a versatility that TV and print cannot, essentially because it is a more addictive combination of the two mediums. According to Michael Real, the internet has become “a sports encyclopedia, an interactive medium for self-publishing, a publicity vehicle for teams and athletes, a betting site, an outlet for neglected sports…” (“Sports Online” p. 172.)
ReplyDeleteAs such, teams and players would be crazy not to take advantage. Like we discussed last week, players need to market themselves. They are the commodities in the market that is sports. As such, from their point of view, it would make sense to engage the fans in new and exciting ways. For Curt Schilling, this was starting a blog. But for many athletes from many sports, the newest trend is to “tweet.”
Twitter gives players the chance to “strategically and selectively self-present to the public,” (Sanderson, “The Blog is Serving Its Purpose,” p. 912). Putting themselves out there and marketing themselves as worthy investments has become a part of the game. Doing it via Twitter is simply a new step in the process.
In many ways, using Twitter is smart. It allows players to interact with fans in a way they would otherwise be unable to. For some athletes, it is a chance to reveal their personalities off the field (or court). For example, Andy Roddick happens to post some of the funniest “tweets” out there. People who are familiar with tennis know he has a great sense of humor, but putting himself out there on Twitter opens him up to a whole new demographic. Gathering a following on Twitter thanks to his personality could generate a new fan base, which in turn could produce new fans for the game of tennis as a whole.
Plus, “the Web can now make a fan feel local even when hundreds of thousands of miles away,” (Real 179). I can personally attest to that. I studied abroad last semester during the NBA Championships. However, thanks to Twitter, I was able to get play by play coverage during the game. On the Celtics’ website, they set up a message board of sorts, where people could comment on the game as it was happening. To make it credible, they positioned three journalists in the crowd, “tweeting” on every point. Normally I would call this overkill, but seeing as I had gone six months without basketball, I was more than happy to stare at my computer screen, waiting for the next tweet to come up.
But where does it stop? Well, one would think the field of play, but players tweeting on the sidelines have disproved that.
Players should use Twitter on their own time, not while a game is going on. “Tweeting” during the course of the game shows a complete lack of professionalism, not to mention poor sportsmanship. If a player isn’t in the game, then that player should be watching, learning, and cheering on teammates. Not on Twitter. It’s a disservice to the sport to not be fully engaged when there is a game happening. To quote Herman Edwards, you play to win the game – not to tweet about.
Personally, I think that the whole concept of Twitter is ridiculous. People need to go outside and have lives, rather than sitting on their computers or phones updating people about their personal lives. Nobody cares whether you are currently eating a banana or if you are mad at your boyfriend. Although I think that the whole concept of Twitter is ridiculous, I do feel that it can be interesting for fans to see what their favorite athletes are doing or feeling. However, these athletes should not be able to focus on anything but the game while they are on the court or field.
ReplyDeleteIn a world where technology is constantly on the rise, sports fans are given many different means of relating to their favorite athletes. Many of them choose the video game path, as illustrated in Leonard’s, An Untapped Field: Exploring the World of Virtual Sports Gaming. Through video games, people are able to actually “become” their favorite players. “Within team sports games it is rare that a player is not available on the game” (Leonard 396). This shows that through video games, we can pretend to be just about any professional athlete that we want. However, virtual fandom doesn’t end at the video game level.
It is no secret that many sports fans have turned to the internet in order to get their news, information, and updates on athletes and organizations. At least half of my roommates, including myself, have ESPN.com as our homepage. In Sports Online: The Newest Player in Mediasport, Michael Real states, “The growth of the number of persons accessing sports site on the World Wide Web has grown in a manner parallel to the growth of Web production and content, perhaps at even a faster rate” (174). People are constantly checking the internet for statistics on their favorite players, but with the development of Twitter, fans can actually know what their favorite players are thinking. However, athletes are going way too far in that they actually update their Twitter status during their games.
I personally feel that there should be a rule against allowing athletes to “Tweet” during any sports-related activities, including during practice, in the locker room, etc. Coaches definitely need to crack down, and make sure that their players worry more about the game, and less about the fact that they haven’t updated their Twitter statuses recently.
Twitter has been great at breaking news since it's grown in exponential popularity over the last year.
ReplyDeleteMichael Real wrote about sports online in his essay, "Sports Online: The Newest Player in Mediasport."
He lauds the Internet, saying, "Its accessibility, interactivity, speed, and multimedia content are triggering a fundamental change for which no one can yet predict the outcome" (171).
Real essentially is describing Twitter without even knowing it. Twitter has grown in popularity because of its ability to be the first to break news. If someone sees something and tweets it, it could spread like wildfire.
Another dimension to this is the cost. Twitter is free. But most newspapers are struggling now because they don't know how to make money off the Internet.
Bryan Butler and Michael Sagas wrote, "Making Room in the Lineup: Newspaper Web Sites Face Growing Competition for Sports Fans’ Attention."
They write, "Another worry is that now a whole generation of adults is accustomed to reading news for free. Gannett commissioned a task force to explore what Gen-X readers liked and found that young adults are used to accessing news online for free (Carroll, 2003). Newspapers struggle to reach Gen-X and Gen-Y readers now (Carroll), and charging
fees to view content will not make reaching them any easier" (20-21).
Competing with free news is quickly making print newspapers an antiquated notion. It's only a matter of time before most newspapers shut down their hard copy versions. That transition has already begun, unfortunately.
The internet has become the ultimate news host because of it's endless resources. Whether you are a dedicated fan or a fantasy sports player, the Web has all anyone will ever need.
ReplyDeleteAs Michael Real mentioned, ESPN, Yahoo and a few other still popular sites were the first to emerge from the sports world (Real 172). With such a large market of sports fans in the world, these sites have become some of the most high-traffic sites on the Web. However, Real notes that these sites, like all sites, had slow starts.
"The 2003 Super Bowl on ABC-TV was viewed in 43.4 million homes in the United States, while only 1,028,000 visitors accessed the official Super Bowl Web site. But that Web number was nearly triple from two years earlier."
While ESPN and Yahoo are excellent news sources, perhaps fan sites might have an advantage because of the hostile-media effect.
"The hostile-media effect is the tendency among some news consumers who highly identify with an issue to perceive media reports as biased against them, even if they are balanced by journalistic standards" (Butler 22).
As the lead blogger pointed out, social networking sites have also joined the sports scene on the Web, and twitter is taking full advantage.
I have a twitter account myself (@lennysyankees), and I follow many big-time athletes like Shaq. A lot of their tweets are more entertaining than they are revealing valuable news. I don't mind athletes tweeting during the game, as long as they are not revealing their strategy. It may be a little unprofessional, but in the end, they're just doing their job, like everyone else. If you had a twitter, wouldn't you tweet during work? I think that is how these athletes are seeing things, and I don't disagree with them.
The coverage of professional sports online has grown drastically over the last decade or so. The more media outlets there are, the closer fans get can get to their beloved team. Michael Real said in his article, “Sports Online” that the average time spent on a sports website is nine minutes per page. Globally, the average person spends about forty-five seconds on any given website (Real, 175). Think about that! Just goes to show you how important sports are in the world we live in.
ReplyDeleteAs coverage of professional sports began, it seems as though the focus was on the sport as a whole and then as the years went on, the news became more team orientated. I personally love to be able to go online and find updates about my Lakers on pretty much any sports website. I generally go to the NBA section of ESPN.com or I will go right to Lakers.com. Sure I have my favorite teams, but I, along with everyone else, have our favorite players who we like to read about and follow.
At first, there was not too much player specific information out there unless the player had their own specific website. For instance, Kobe Bryant’s website is www.kb24.com which is updated every so often and it gives insight about what is going on in Kobe’s life. The site includes different information with videos of public appearances, release dates of his signature shoes, and other cool information. Now the problem is, is that I am sure some fanatics check the website multiple times a day, and naturally, the website cannot keep up to speed with the amount of viewers, so of course there was a new innovation. Now players or celebrities can keep their fans “in the know” every second of the day! Welcome to the world of Twitter.
To start off, I would like to say that I do in fact have a Twitter account. I first swore that I would never create an account, but I did so in the summer time. In fact, the reason I did so, was because I knew the summer was going to be full of trades and other transactions in the NBA, so I figured I would go right to the source, the players themselves. It was definitely cool reading the tweets of the athletes. I felt as though I somewhat knew who they were because they would specifically say where they were or what they were doing. It is definitely cool hearing the information first hand, but at the same time, enough is enough.
Now if I am an owner of a professional sports franchise, I want one thing to be on my players mind, winning. During the season, the main focus needs to be winning and performing at the highest level night in and night out. No professional athlete should ever lose sight of that, but with the continuous growth of social networking websites, specifically, Twitter, athletes could side tracked by how many followers they have instead of worrying about their defensive assignment for the night. I am not opposed to the idea of athletes using Twitter completely, but there needs to be restrictions, which the NBA recently took care of.
It is funny to think that technology has come this far that professional leagues need to regulate social networking sites during competitions. As a fan, I certainly do not want a player on my team updating his twitter in the middle of a game. Why? Well, it is simple because I already know what is on his mind, winning. Tweeting is definitely a great way for fans to get to know their role models or hero’s, and professional athletes should definitely continue to use it, but they need to know when and when not to use it.
There is no question that Twitter has been beneficial in the aspect of fans being able to connect with their favorite athletes, but when is the line crossed? Is it when athletes “tweet” every fifteen minutes or every hour? Who knows, but the fact of the matter is that Twitter is taking over these athletes’ lives. They do not get paid based upon the amount of followers they have, and for some, Twitter seems like a distraction. Well, how about this, during the off-season, tweet as much as you like and during the season, one tweet a day. How about that?
Each superstar athlete gets paid thousands and millions of dollars to go perform during games. The fans contribute to that by attending the games and rooting on their favorite player. Now the fan is at the game, the player is at the game, so why the Twitter updates?
ReplyDeleteFirst off I think Twitter is a very useless inention unless your a major business and are trying to let people know news about the business.
For an athelete to feel the need to "tweet" during games is crazy. Granted I only played high school sports but when I was getting ready to leave the locker room to go play a game, I never thought about grabbing my phone or the last tweet i sent, I was focused on the game. "The emergence of strong centralizing websites- ESPN.com, Sportsline, nascar.com, cnnsi.com and MLB.com-confirms the editorial function of media." (Real) With more companies focusing on their websites and trying to grow the online market. The players who have access to the web try to create their own quick type of web page set up with Twitter. The post becomes even more credible if it is posted during a game.
Twitter is ruining sports and causeing players to take their mind away from the game. I certainly do not want to find out that a player on my team missed a play because he was "tweeting" just minutes before.