Friday, Oct. 23, 2009

Twitter: Opportunity or threat?

1/83/8

CHARLOTTE, N.C. | Time was the only thing tweeting during football season was the ref's whistle.

Not anymore.

Twitter, expected to grow from 6 million adult American users in 2008 to 18 million by year's end, has become a part of football this season at the pro, college and even high school level. And officials are struggling to make sense of players' and fans' use of the social media platform.

Here's the latest:

At the college level, the Atlantic Coast Conference has embraced social media during football season. East Carolina University and other schools in Conference USA have moved beyond the basics, and have called in consultants for an advanced session on how to use social media to help the conference.

And the NFL is cautiously exploring how to integrate social media into players' game day.

Football teams and officials are accustomed to blowing the whistle and controlling many aspects of the game. But how do you slow a 140-character texting communication that is faster than Carolina Panthers wide receiver Steve Smith down the sidelines?

"It's a conflict of cultures," says Kathleen Hessert, whose Charlotte company, Sports Media Challenge, has done social media consulting with the Southeastern Conference, UNC Chapel Hill and others. "Football is very hierarchical, and is steeped in discipline. This is the play, and this is how you run it. Social media comes along, and suddenly the players and fans have a new freedom. They don't need the league and the media to tell them what's going on."

And social networking becomes more than a symbolic threat when it involves potential revenue. For example, what if fans post game videos that in the past could only be seen on television or an authorized Internet site?

Earlier this season the Southeastern Conference banned social media at all athletic events, concerned there was a threat to its $3 billion contract with CBS.

The worry was that fans could take mobile videos of games or live-stream plays and share the footage via social media. Following a torrent of tweets from protesting fans, the league quickly reversed its policy, allowing all social media use by fans at the games - except for sharing videos.

In the Charlotte Mecklenburg school system, high school football coaches dictate their players' behavior on the sidelines, and there is an understanding that officials and volunteers don't use cell phones on the field. But questions are arising as Twitter becomes a popular way to get the scores of rival teams - valuable information that's in demand on Friday nights. Vicki Hamilton, director of CMS's athletic programs, was standing on the sidelines on a recent Friday night when a school official checked Twitter and got the score of another game.

"This is new territory for us," Hamilton says. "There's a lot of talk about tweets and what you can and can't do. Could you use it in a game? I'm very anxious to get into a discussion with my colleagues" at the N.C. High School Athletic Association meeting Wednesday in Chapel Hill. "A few years ago, we thought cell phones would be the 'be all, end all.' Now, guess what? We have tweets. Where do you draw the line?"

What's ahead?

"We have embraced social media as a key communications tool" for football, says ACC conference spokesman Michael Kelly, with an active conference twitter stream. "But basketball is its own special community."

And in the NFL, this season is an ongoing experiment. "Twitter took off in February," Hessert says. "We've never been here before."

The league is cautiously looking into how to involve fans while protecting its media machine of TV deals and multi-layered league licensing. Currently, players and coaches may not use social media on game days from 90 minutes before a game until after postgame interviews.

Beyond that, NFL coaches make the social-media rules for their players, and policies vary from the San Diego Chargers fining a player for tweeting a complaint about training-camp food to the New York Jets hiring an intern to help players tweet. Panthers coach John Fox has urged his players to use common sense in their use of social media. Quarterback Matt Moore uses Twitter and kickoff specialist Rhys Lloyd is quite active.

As was the case with touchdown celebrations, league rebels are testing the limits. Cincinnati Bengals receiver Chad Ochocinco and Buffalo Bills receiver Terrell Owens - both known for breaking the rules - each have more than 200,000 followers, and their social media behavior is lively.

Here's one of Ochocinco's milder tweets from Thursday: "Headed to Sams Club to stock up on groceries for the rest of the year, mainly junk food in bulk ..." He has also sent out tweets threatening to violate the NFL's game-day Twitter policy.

When the rules are set, "that's when Twitter will really become part of the game," Hessert says. "Because [rules are] what football's culture is about."