In case you missed it earlier today here is a quick recap what Sean discussed with Francis & Amanda on ABC Grandstand.
Listen to the segment, thanks to Josh for hooking us up.
Floyd Mayweather Vs #Linsanity
Take a look at Floyd Mayweather's tweet regarding the meteoric rise of Jeremy Lin in the NBA (as this Linofgraphic explains).
Poor form from Mayweather, it shows athletes need to treat Twitter the same as a radio mike or TV camera. Amazingly it got over 8000 RTs as fans were either showing support or highlighting the boneheaded tweet to friends.
Pinterest – The Jeremy Lin of Social Media
Like Lin Pinterest is getting plenty of press for it's amazing stats in a short amount of time. Pinterest is a online destination where you “pin” your favourite things. Women have been flocking to the new platform posting fashion, design & motivational images but like Twitter who you follow will determine your Pinterest experience. A few sports teams are testing out the platform you can find them here, let us know if you find more.
Sports Geek Medals
Each week Francis wants medals awarded from the sports digital world this week we have a focus on #sportsbiz
My #digisport medals this week on @abcgrandstand went to @Peter_R_Casey, @srabe & @darrenrovell tune in next week for more #grandstand
— Sean Callanan (@seancallanan) February 17, 2012
Bronze – Peter Robert Casey
Peter was the first media-credentialled tweep in NCAA & NBA. Read more about it here.
Follow @peter_r_casey
Silver – Bryan Srabian
Bryan Srabian – Bryan is the “engager” behind the @sfgiants watch him talk about what tweeting behind the scenes at the World Series.
Follow @srabe
Gold – Darren Rovell
Darren Rovell – Darren is a Twitter vet who has driven sports business news into a TV show Game On NBC Sports. Check out his latest clips.
Follow @darrenrovell
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Until next week
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Podcast transcription
FRANK: Amanda Shalala , Francis Leach with you, as well as a man who likes to hand out a business card that says I’m Sports Geek. Sean Callanan consults to a whole range of sporting clubs when it comes to digital media and selling yourself in that space, and he joins us here on Grandstand this morning to keep us up to date each week on what’s going on in Twittersphere and elsewhere in the world of sport. Good day, Sean. How are you going?
SEAN: Good day, Francis, good morning.
FRANK: I know you’ve done some work with the Manly Sea Eagles over the last little while as well.
SEAN: Yes, and they’re doing okay, but I’m sure Geoff Toovey, the new coach there, would like to be… might give him a blast at halftime, I’d say.
FRANK: Now, Amanda, do you follow anyone on Twitter from sports clubs, and the like, isn’t that how you source a lot of your information these days as well?
AMANDA: Oh, yeah, definitely. It’s often the first place to get information. For example, the other day when Michael Clark, we were waiting to find out how long he was out for with that hamstring injury. The first news of it was from his Twitter account, so it’s actually really important as a journo to be across all the different athletes.
FRANK: And, Sean, that’s what you do.
SEAN: Yeah, and it’s exactly the same. The athletes have to realize that every single tweet is quotable and can appear in the news. Just last week we were talking to the guys at the Adelaide Crows who thought it was funny to have a little bit of a Twitter Stash at the media’s expense. And then it obviously gets picked up by the papers as a bit of a war at the Crows, and all they were doing was having a bit of a joke.
FRANK: And so it gets blown out of proportion. They’ve got to learn that when they send something as a tweet they’re actually publishing.
SEAN: Exactly, exactly, and if they want to have fun with it then put a smiley face or leave a sarcastic hashtag at the end; unfortunately, I think it’s a ____ like this, not a more sarcastic font. People can’t read that, so…
FRANK: Now we know that particularly in a lull in it this sporting season if you give a hungry media an opportunity to start a song and dance then they’ll crank it up big time. I guess that’s the nature of things. Now, Sean, each week we’re going to have a look around Twitter and elsewhere in the social media to see what’s being said in the world of sport and who is saying what to whom. The big one this week has been Floyd Mayweather, boxer, who turned his hand to a bit of criticism of Jeremy Lin the basketball sensation from the New York Knicks. Now give us a bit of background on this one.
SEAN: Well, yeah, I mean, if you haven’t heard the Jeremy Lin story or linsanity you obviously haven’t turned on a computer in the last two weeks, but Jeremy Lin from the New York Knicks, the story went one day from being cut and then he starts playing for the Knicks first six games, scores the most points in the NBA in his first six starts, more than Shaq, more than Jordan, and playing really well, and really energizing New York, and obviously New York is a town that loves this sport, and if a story is going to go big It’s going to go big.
Unfortunately Floyd Mayweather decided to get on Twitter and tweet that Jeremy Lin’s only getting coverage because he’s Asian. If it was an African American player, playing, he wouldn’t get as much exposure, which is obviously disappointing. What is astounding from my point of view, that tweet itself got 8,000 retweets, so whether that’s all the people agreeing with him or just amplifying it to make sure the media finds out that he’s made such a silly tweet.AMANDA: I’m interested afterwards, he sort of seemed to go on this offensive because he’s retweeting everyone saying great things about him, like, you know, Floyd Mayweather greatest athlete ever. Is this part of a strategy for him to try and restore his image, do you think?
SEAN: Ah, it’s a little bit of that. I think Floyd Mayweather is a little bit all about him. I mean one of his tweets earlier this year trying to get that rematch with Manny Pacquiao got 92,000 retweets when effectively he called him out and said, ‘Come on, let’s get it on.’ So, you know, it’s part boxing promotion type of thing. I think that’s the way it is, but, yes, he definitely hasn’t really hit the mark with his phone.
FRANK: You ran into him into, didn’t you, in the states recently when you were over there on business?
SEAN: Well that’s the thing. I was speaking at a conference in LA and we came out in the LA live precinct, near the Staple Center. We couldn’t realize why this big crowd was there and there’re six really big blokes holding all this crowd back, and in the middle was a little bloke in the middle. And all these people were taking pictures of them and they had the six Escalade’s, black Escalade’s there—you thought they’re obviously going to hop in the cars and ride off, but no they were only a 100 meters from the hotel where we were staying and so they just decided to walk the 100 meters and take this crew of about 200 people, and it was really just for the spectacle. It was like, yeah, I’m going to be in the middle, and he had all these big former lineman, his own posse, sort of pushing everyone back. But he’s only a little guy, but I’m sure he packs a punch when you’re in the ring.
FRANK: That was Floyd Mayweather walking 100 meters to his hotel room.
SEAN: Yep, pretty much, pretty much, and me and my friend were there because we were staying there. We sort of got our hotel passes out and worked our way through the crowd, Wayne’s World style, to get in the hotel. They were going, ‘Why are those guys gettin’ in?’ Well, we were staying there, but I tried to get myself a snap but my friend wasn’t very good with the iPhone camera, so…
FRANK: Sean, what was the reaction on Twitter, to Mayweather’s comments. I mean it was a fury of indignation because the numbers don’t lie, and Jeremy Lin’s numbers in terms of his first five games do say that he’s the best starter in the history of the sport.
SEAN: Yeah, and there has been a bit of money-bowl analysis of it in that couple of guys—it’s easy to come out now and say he’s done really well, but some of his stats of getting points in the paint and showing that he was right up there with some of the really good NBA college players that sort of said that he could do well. And the other thing is the Australian connection. He actually played under Bryan Goorjian during the lockouts, and there’s actually been a bit of support from Australian players like Chris Anstey saying ‘Bryan Goorjian is one of the best development coaches,’ so maybe we can claim, at least Bryan Goorjian can claim, a few tweeks to Jeremy Lin’s game because he was a rookie last year with Golden State and just didn’t get the opportunity.
FRANK: We’ll try and catch up with Bryan Goorjian, hopefully, today and talk to him about Jeremy Lin and coaching him and whether the Goorj had an impact on his incredible meteoric rise to success. Now, Amanda, do you know anything about Pinterest?
AMANDA: Pinterest, no, I have no idea.
FRANK: Sean, tell us about that. Is this the latest to the sports digital experience?
SEAN: So, so Pinterest is the Jeremy Lin of social media. It just had a nice segue because it is just completely blowing up at the minute. It’s an online pin board, so as you find pictures and articles, but more pictures as a visual medium, you pin it to a board. So I have a board called linsanity, so any time a new Jeremy Lin photo comes out, a new name or a new mesh up of something, I will pin it to a linsanity board. I have a board of stadiums I’ve been to, so I’ll put pictures of that, so the idea is you can put whatever you like there. But initially I think I got on a couple of weeks ago. Initially I got on there and it didn’t seem that it was going to be very much of a male-centric social network. I went on there; there was wedding dresses, cupcakes, high heel shoes, so if you’re a single man I’d advise you to get on board. It’s a target-rich environment, but it’s a bit like Twitter. It’s what you make of it, so if you follow a lot of people who are talking sport or music or whatever, then obviously you’ll feed you. You can curate your own feed. And the reason it’s really blowing up, it’s a bit viral. It’s invite only at the minute, so you’ve got to know someone who’s on Pinterest that can give you an invite, but it’s a really big traffic driver for websites, so if I was to go to the grandstand site and take a picture of the grandstand site and pin it to the Pinterest board, people might click on that link and then come back to the site, so from a web traffic point of view, it’s driving more traffic than sites like Google Plus and Linked In and things like that, so that’s why it’s getting a real lot of buzz.
FRANK: If you want to get involved how do you?
SEAN: You pretty much go to Pinterest and request an invite or most likely if you got your Facebook feed you will see someone posting lots of pictures of cupcakes or Jeremy Lin and ask them, but eventually they’ll open it up completely.
FRANK: Amanda’s going to post her badminton photos.
AMANDA: Yeah, exactly, sure.
FRANK: And she’s going to have a Pinterest European handball side as well.
AMANDA: While holding a cupcake.
SEAN: So at the moment it’s a bit different to the other networks that are real broadcasty, like you’ll use Twitter to say he’s the latest news. The idea is meant to be around your brands.
FRANK: Before we let you go, the podium, the digital podium. Each week we’re going to ask you to give us three things, a 3, 2, & 1 from the digital space this week in the world of sport and people who are doing interesting stuff.
SEAN: Yep, so my 3, 2, 1 this week, I’m looking at SportsBiz for a bronze medal, Peter Robert Casey, so it’s @peter_r_casey. He’s a guy from New York. He was the first guy to ever get media accreditation for tweeting.
FRANK: Really, so he’s the first media accredited NBA person on Twitter.
SEAN: Yeah, so the first day he was tweeting for Sir John’s and then he was doing it for the Knicks and then from looking at Major League Baseball, the San Francisco Giants, Bryan Srabian or @srabe on Twitter. He’s done a really good job with the Giants, for what he’s done with the MLB, but really the gold medal in SportsBiz goes to Darren Rovell who will tweet all kinds of sports news all the time. He’s got his own show on CNBC, the new NBC Sports, covering all sports biz, so if you want to know what’s happening, he actually just said that MSG, Time Warner Cable Deal has finally gone through. He said there was lintervention that made it happen because the cable network had been out of not showing Knicks’ games
FRANK: So if you were in New York you couldn’t watch Jeremy Lin?
SEAN: No one’s been able to watch Jeremy Lin. The ratings have been going off, so obviously that’s caused a bit of pressure and now they’ve done a deal, and they’ve obviously accredited Jeremy Lin.
FRANK: There you go, so he’s our gold medalist in the digital podium this week @darrenrovell, all one word @darrenrovell. Follow him and you’ll keep up to date with everything, and the Sports Geek, Sean Callanan, Sean, if people want to follow you on Twitter, as well, where do we find you?
SEAN: They can find me, @SeanCallanan or at @SportsGeekHQ on Twitter or sportsgeek.com.au. And they’ll find everything we’re doing.
FRANK: And you’ll find out his Pinterest board with all his cupcakes as well.
SEAN: Yes and all the sports teams that are starting to use Pinterest as well. So we’ve even got a board for
that.FRANK: There you go. Thanks again for coming in, mate. We’ll catch you again next week.
SEAN: No worries, thanks Francis.
FRANK: Sean Callanan our Sports Geek talking about sport and the digital media here on Grandstand Breakfast. Hope your Saturday morning is shaping up nicely.