I had to post this great video by Kip Bodnar, a PR/Web 2.0 professional, discussing why he prefers Twitter over Facebook. If you're a complete newbie to Twitter, you might want to check out Caroline Middlebrook's Big Juicy Twitter Guide to learn more.
There are a growing number of people who prefer the more personal/real-time connection that Twitter offers vs. Facebook. So how does this relate to sports? Everyone agrees that teams need to be where their fans are, and many teams are doing one or more of the following things:
- Adding social media elements (user generated content, videos, blogs, etc) to their main pages.
- See the Washington Wizards Blog for an example of how they're using blogging to connect with fans
- Building their own social networking sites
- See what the Indianapolis Colts are doing with MyColts.
- Establishing presence on existing social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, etc)
While the Twitter audience is not nearly as large as Facebook or MySpace, it is growing and it may soon make sense for teams to test out the service. Why not let one of your most avid fans be the team's main Twitter guy (or better yet, have a contest for people to send in video saying why they deserve this). Then let the guy (or girl) tweet team promotions, ask and answer questions, monitor what people are saying about the team, and offer fans a more personal connection than what they'd get by being "friends" with a team's profile page on Facebook/MySpace.
Twitter is free--the only cost is time. Why not give it a try?
You can follow me on Twitter - my username is JasonPeck