Kobe Bryant announced 2015-16 will be his last season in the NBA.

Where did Kobe Bryant announce retirement?

He announced it on The Player's Tribune with a short poem.

Kobe Bryant announcement on Facebook

He posted it to his 20M Facebook audience.

Kobe Bryant announcement on Twitter

And to his nearly 8M followers on Twitter

Nice touch by Lakers for fans at tonight's game.

Nothing on Instagram

Surprisingly nothing on his Instagram @KobeBryant

One of the first things we did after seeing the announcement is check out much traffic he drove to The Players Tribune by a simple check you can use to check the stats of a Bit.ly link.

Sports Geek Tip: How to check traffic on a Bit.ly link

Simply add a plus to the end of the Bit.ly link to check it's traffic.

Kobe shared http://playerstribu.ne/dearbball to check the Bit.ly stats go here http://playerstribu.ne/dearbball+

First of all he crashed The Players Tribune website

But look at the numbers in just over 2 hours. Get live update here (look at what happened when LeBron joined Twitter)

Checking in on the stats and reports one day later this article on Forbes raised some good points on lack of technical infrastructure on The Player's Tribune but I disagree they should be using Medium as a publishing platform.  Why build an asset on someone else's land when you can built it on your own?

Missed opportunity

Kobe now selling merch on his website, how many T-shirts would have been sold if the Dear Basketball letter included a link?

Kobe Announcement 24 hours on

24 hours later Twitter still drove over 50% of traffic on the original link shared by Kobe on Twitter & Facebook, now at 1.5M clicks.  Twitter wins the breaking news smackdown here. Get live update here

Again this shows the power that athletes hold now with their own social platforms:

• Athletes remain the most coveted celebrities by Facebook & Twitter
• Athletes can rival media platforms and can drive traffic
• Athletes who understand and leverage social media will be highly sought after by sponsors
• The Players Tribune is driving the “own the platform” model giving athletes a voice
• Missed opportunity for Kobe to build his own database to truly own the platform
• Why not offer a email sign up to get a copy of the Dear Basketball letter in PDF form?
  • With a follow up opportunity to buy a hard copy like they handed out at Lakers game?
  • If Cards Against Humanity can raise $71K selling nothing no doubt this would have raised $100K+

More on Kobe's retirement on next Sports Geek Podcast.