Sean and the guys at Harftime discussed the true power of social media and it's ability to deliver rapid fire news, such as we saw with the #melbearthquake.
Did you get involved on social media following the earthquake?
Kris Humphries – will he get fined?
Like the issues the Carlton boys had when tweeting about umpires, the New Jersey Nets' (now in Brooklyn) big man Kris Humphries tweeted about the referees in the NBA Finals, expressing his frustration at some soft calls.
While Kris wasn't a part of the teams that were playing and he has deleted the tweet, it is unlikely he will get fined, but we will keep an eye on it.
NASCAR and Olympics social media branding
We know how popular social media is and with it going from strength to strength, both Twitter and Facebook are trying to bring sports fans into their platform, so Twitter made a big play just a couple of weeks ago with a big partnership with NASCAR, rolling out their first TV ads in association with NASCAR. Essentially, it's a way for Twitter to deepen their relationship with big sporting events around the world.
The Olympics have joined the revolution, teaming with Facebook to give a quick way to follow all the different Olympic based pages and all the athletes who will be involved in the Olympics. Through the page, fans can like all the athletes, federations, and teams, so there is a very Olympic flavored Facebook feed to get a bit of a different feel for the events. To see the tightness of their restrictions in the Athlete's Village, listen to the podcast.
NBA Social Media Awards
Ever the innovators in social media, NBA have enlisted Shaquille O'Neal to host a TV show where they’re going to give away some social media awards. One that they did announce early, which was an easy one to see, was social break out player of the year and that was obviously Jeremy Lin, who went from some 20,000 followers back in December to now having a couple million after a breakout on-court year with the New York Knicks.
Until Next Week
Listen to Harf Time on Wednesdays (at 2:45pm) when Sean Callanan discuss sports digital with Daniel Harford.
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Podcast transcription
TONY: It is a quarter to three and welcome back to at Harf Time. Is he in with—at the Schibecikster and at SportsGeekHQ, Sean Callanan.
SEAN: Good Day, Tony.
TONY: Did I get all that right?
SEAN: You did get it all right.
TONY: Shewwwwwww…..
SEAN: Yes, there’s plenty of handles there. You’re more than likely to get most of them right.
TONY: Could not get my handle over Twitter last night though. For the first time ever I saw the power of social media at its absolute fullest. I mentioned the story before when my wife said she felt the chair move. It wasn’t me. And I thought what’s happening here? It might’ve been an earthquake. Let’s check it out. Went on Twitter and there was already thousands of posts within two minutes of it happening, and they just continued for the next three or four hours.
SEAN: And it was pretty good entertainment. I mean everyone’s first reaction was just to go to Twitter and Facebook and just write “EARTHQUAKE,” all in caps, and pretty much that’s all you saw for the first couple of minutes, but yeah, Twitter is a great platform for live. That’s why it works so well with sport, and it’s working so well this year. Last year we had the problems with delayed coverage and you can’t tweet about delayed coverage because there were people who were tweeting the results and things like that, but yeah, it really works well live, and everyone’s response when they’re shaking their couch and go, ‘Hey, hon, was that really an earthquake.’ Well, you can’t go to TV. That’s not going to report on it for another half an hour. Radio is about five or ten minutes as they’re gathering all the info.
Yeah, Twitter, and Facebook, to go and check in with all your friends and see how they’re all doing. Yeah, it’s definitely the way that live spreads and we’re fortunate that there was no damage and so then it just became everyone having a bit of fun and sharing jokes and everyone was involved. I saw Gary Ablett and Dale Thomas tweeting pictures of the damage and they were just doing handstands and things like that and guys like Andrew Bogut were tweeting the deckchair that had fallen over, “We will rebuild.”
The news travels fast and just by watching your own stream you can see how far it reached. And five or ten minutes later we knew where the epicenter was and all of that kind of stuff, so it’s definitely the way that information travels and it sort of shows where traditional media fits in that live breaking stuff, and so that’s why it’s important for places like SEN to be on top of the tweets so you know what’s happening, but also, hey, you can get your information out there.
TONY: And a lot of people out there will say, ‘Oh, look I don’t understand Twitter. I don’t want to be on it. I don’t even want to be a part of it.
SEAN: Well we had Andrew Andrew Demetriou saying, ‘I don’t want to be on Twitter. I don’t want to tell people when I have lunch or when I go to the supermarket.’ Well that’s a really boring Twitter account, Andrew, and if that’s how Andrew would use Twitter, no one would follow him, but you know a lot of people use it to get information and then connect with people, so it is about getting that group collected and people end up congregating around other people of similar interests, so you’ll be following people who talk in footy and write about sports, and I follow people who follow the NBA and footy and talk in sports and tech, and you end up having this nice little community from your Twitter following.
TONY: I should also congratulate Farney to a great job last night covering the earthquake here on the program. Well done mate. Now speaking of NBA and speaking of Twitter and speaking of fines that have been handed down for people speaking out of turn.
SEAN: Now if the Carlton boys were only listening to us last week when I was talking to Thommo I went through the dos and don’ts. I said you should be checking all your tweets with, in my case it’s Auntie Cath, or with your nan and saying well if nan passes it, it should go out the door. Now those Carlton boys didn’t listen and they got themselves a bit of strife, which is why AndrewDemetriou’s commenting. But, yeah, just a half an hour ago I was listening to a bit of the NBA on the radio and saw that Kris Humphries tweeted about the refs and these charges ‘they were drunk,’ which is effectively exactly the same as Marc Murphy’s tweet.
I don’t think, now for those of you who don’t know who Kris Humphries is, he’s Mr. 72 days. He’s Mr. Kim Kardashian, so he was married to Kim Kardashian in the off season and now he’s back playing basketball as a single man. But, yeah, I don’t think whether he is going to be leaving with any fine, now when I think a $7,000 fine is really going to be much chump change to an NBA player, but I actually don’t think he will be fined for that. He’s just pretty much, similar to the Carlton boys, just expressing his frustration that the game’s getting over called and the charges are a bit ridiculous, but I’ll keep you posted to see if the NBA does come down on him for complaining against the referees, but to a certain degree I don’t think it’s that bad and that over the top but it’s just the standards that AFL football and all athletes have to adhere to. They have to play by the rules that their boss sets and one of the rules is don’t complain about the umps.
TONY: Talk to me about brand pages.
SEAN: Well, yeah, what we’re seeing is we’re seeing both Twitter and Facebook trying to really bring back those sports fans back to their platform, so Twitter made a big play just a couple of weeks ago with a big partnership with NASCAR and actually rolled out their first TV ads and they did it in association with NASCAR. And they really promoted the NASCAR hashtag, so if you’re watching NASCAR, it’s still on 1 HD there, and again it’s great, it looks awesome in the high def. You would use the hashtag #nascar and get to find other NASCAR drivers or fans, and what they’ve now provided is a particular page on Twitter, so if you go to twitter.com/nascar what Twitter is doing is aggregating all the tweets around NASCAR providing pictures from NASCAR themselves and from the drivers and from the pit crews and all of that, as well as integrating tweets from the media and from fans. So it’s sort of a little one-stop shop for ‘Hey, here’s all the content coming through. Here’s the conversation,’ and as the NAS, you know, you can sort of have it as that circuit screen experience; you’re watching the NASCAR there and you’re seeing the race and you go ‘Oh, what’s happening from a social point of view. I can see Dale Jr.’s won for the first time in four years and I can see the tweets coming through from all different accounts,’ so it’s a way for Twitter to deepen their relationship with events, so they’re definitely going down the path of doing it around events so we’ll probably see it around big finals like the Super Bowl. They’ll probably do it around NASCAR. They’ll probably do something around the Olympics, but what we’re seeing also is Facebook has gone and built a page specific for the Olympics.
If you go to facebook.com/pages/Olympics they give you a quick way to follow all the different Olympic based pages and all the athletes who will be involved in the Olympics. So you can go and like all the athletes, like all the federations, all the teams, so you would start getting a very Olympic flavored Facebook feed to get a bit of a different feel for the events, so the Olympic movement is still trying to come to grips with social media and London’s going to be the social media games, but they’re really protective of the TV rights. None of the athletes can take any video. They’re very protective of also the privacy in the athlete’s village, so they’re very mindful if you’re just a little known athlete and there you see LeBron James just passed they don’t want you taking pictures of him in the athlete’s village just as he’s eating his breakfast. They’d be happier if you take a picture with him if he knows it and he or she can get that that permission, but, yes, they’re very mindful of athlete’s from other countries stalking the big stars that hang around the village because they want to have that experience as well.
Facebook sort of jumped into that space and trying to be involved in the Olympic movement themselves.
TONY: Interesting to see how they handle the situation because very much the Olympic movement is a closed movement. You can only mention the word Olympics during Olympic time, especially with a sponsor involved if that sponsor is a sponsor of the Olympics. So SEN couldn’t have their Olympic coverage brought to you by Joe Bloggs down the road because you just can’t do that. And I’m wondering could so many athletes now have sponsored tweets and the like and I’m wondering how that falls in to the Olympic life.
SEAN: So potentially Facebook could get a letter from the Olympic committee because they’ve used it as Olympics as the euro. They’ve pretty much pushed it as London 2012, which is as a lot of people will do. They’ll say hey we’re talking London 2012 and not using the Olympic rings, but there’s nothing stopping them using all the properties that are on Facebook, as the Olympic games opt in to be on Facebook well you’re effectively allowing us to market you as well, so there is a little bit of two-way action there, and the Olympics have to learn well if we want to play on these platforms we have to give a little bit back, but, yes, it will be interesting to see how the games come out because really as it is every four years there will be two weeks of intense scrutiny on that event. Will we see more problems of athletes tweeting the wrong things like the gun show shot and stuff like that? It just makes everything from a monitoring point of view, a brand protection point of view really, really key, and athletes get stuck in the middle unfortunately.
TONY: In 30 seconds, Sean, tell us about the NBA Social Media Awards.
SEAN: Well the NBA has always been innovators in social media and tonight with Shaquille O’Neil, one of the pioneers in social media, he’ll be hosting a TV show where they’re going to give away some awards. One that they did announce early, which was an easy one to see, was social break out player of the year and that was obviously Jeremy Lin, linsanity, who went from, I think, about 20,000 followers back in December to now having a couple million and making it big on Broadway will help you there. So Jeremy Lin has been a big breakout star and keep an eye out and see what other awards the NBA awards.
TONY: We’ll do it again next week Sean. Thanks for your time.
SEAN: No worries, Tony.
TONY: Sean Callanan at SportsGeekHQ if you want to follow him on Twitter.
