You are here: Home / Archives for Social Media

Kevin Love’s Insider’s View of the Olympic experience via Twitter, Instagram

August 4, 2012 by 2 Comments

If the 156-73 victory by the USA over Nigeria didn’t quite stimulate your appetite to watch more of the Summer Olympics basketball competition, Kevin Love is here to assist.

As he’s done on Twitter, the Minnesota Timberwolves’ forward and USA Olympic team reserve is thriving in London via social media. He’s chronicling the Olympics in his own personal way via Instagram, the image application.

Love has nearly 382,000 followers on Twitter and more than 56,000 followers on Instgram.

Sweet Dreams, Fellas

During the Summer Olympics, Love is posting an insider’s view of the U.S. team. It’s not network style, like replays of dunks or sweet passes. It’s more like Candid Camera. Love takes compromising, often funny pictures of his teammates with Instagram and also posts the shots to Twitter.

How about a picture of teammates sleeping on the airline with eyeshades on? Or how about teammates with their faces smashed into pillows? Or how about teammates looking prim and proper in their official Olympic attire?

Love’s playing role on the Olympic team may still be undefined. But his roles as the team’s unofficial photographer and official team prankster are well established.

The Summer Olympic basketball competition continues through Aug. 12. Stayed tune for more of Love’s zany Olympic view.

Love’s Twitter handle is @KevinLove and his Instagram signature is KevinLove.

James Raia is an editor and publisher in Sacramento, California. Visit his site: www.tourdefrancelife.com

Filed Under: Instagram, iPhone, Olympics, Social Media, Sports Social Media Tagged With: , , ,

Olympic PoolCam Reveals Strange Creatures Via Twitter

August 3, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Creature in the Olympic swimming pool?

Amid various athletes taking verbal swipes at each other and the paranoia of network PR types overreacting to 140-character opinions is the beauty of Twitter, photography and swimming at the Summer Olympics — direct from a submerged camera.

Specifically, throughout the swimming competition, the Twitter feed L2012 (@L2012PoolCam) has posted 17 tweets — all stunning images from the bottom of the pool at the Aquatic Centre in London.

The image to the left is captioned: “Aargh, what creature is this that’s upon me?”

The Twitter’s description, without human identification, reads: “I match the world’s best swimmers, stroke for stroke. They speed along on top. I race along the bottom, always looking up – and always wet.”

Here’s another sample:

The feed has attracted a wide following of more than 17,000 since the Summer Olympics began. And although the swimming competition largely concludes Aug. 4, two events will remain, the women’s 10km on Aug. 9 and swimming’s concluding event, the men’s 10km, Aug. 10.

James Raia is an editor and publisher in Sacramento, California. Visit his site: www.tourdefrancelife.com

Filed Under: Olympics, Social Media, Sports Photography, Twitter Tagged With: , ,

Google Buys Social Media Startup Wildfire for $250m

August 2, 2012 by 2 Comments

Wildfire joins Google

Social media marketing startup Wildfire has been sold to Google for an estimated $250 million, an interesting partnership considering that the four year old Wildfire made its name in the Facebook space.

According to a blog post on Wildfire’s site the company is starting a new chapter in joining Google, where it is expected to continue operating as it has before/. The company was founded in order to run a promotion on Facebook and has strong ties with that company including receiving investment from Facebook.

Wildfire has established itself as a player in this space. The company, which has roughly 400 employees, 16,000 customers and the successful integration of its software across a range of social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and a number of others.

It runs many of the contests, promotions and marketing campaigns that are seen on social media sites and does not use keyword inquires as its targeting mechanism but rather relies on individual users’ data that is held by the social media sites.

The company said that the deal will not alter its relationship with its customers, but it will be interesting to see if that is true. Increasingly we are seeing technologies that once purchased by one social media company slowly becoming excluded from rival platforms, so it is hard to say.

The company was founded in 2008 by Victoria Ransom and Alain Chuard and has launched over 250,000 social marketing campaigns using its software tools. It has received investments including from a number of venture capital firms including Accel Partners, Founders Fund, Summit Partners, 500 Startups, Felicis Ventures and SoftTech VC as well as Facebook’s fbFund.

Filed Under: Apps, Facebook, Google, Social Media, Social Media Data, Startup, Venture Capital, Wildfire Tagged With: , ,

Hope Solo Plays Nasty On Twitter With Double Gold Medalist, NBC Soccer Analyst Brandi Chastain

July 30, 2012 by 1 Comment

It wasn’t too long ago when media organizations were deciding if quoting athletes’ from their Twitter feeds was appropriate. Now the Associated Press, the international news service, has dedicated multiple 600-word articles about athletes criticizing each other on Twitter during the Summer Olympics.

The current Twitter rant is between current U.S. soccer goalkeeper Hope Solo and NBC Sports analyst Brandi Chastain, the retired U.S. women’s soccer double gold medalist.

Hope Solo (L) and Brandi Chastain

Solo blasted Chastain following the Americans’ 3-0 win over Colombia last Saturday, saying the popular former player should “lay off commentating about defending” and goalkeeping “until you get more educated” and “the game has changed from a decade ago.”

Chastain has responded to Solo’s remarks only briefly, saying, according to the AP, she commenting as an “honest and objective journalist at the Olympics.”

NBC, Chastain’s employer, is apparently more sensitive. It believes the Twitter banter was important enough to issue a statement:

“We are thrilled to be able to offer such complete and compelling coverage of the entire Olympic soccer tournament, and Brandi has been doing an outstanding job,” NBC spokesman Adam Freifeld said. “We wish the U.S. women’s team the best of luck.”

When asked about her strong opinion, Soto commented:

“It’s not about what made me unhappy. It’s not about one game. I have my beliefs that the best commentators and the best analysts should be analyzing come Olympics, come World Cups, and it’s only my opinion. You can take it or leave it, to be honest, so it’s my opinion, and I think analysts and commentators should bring energy and excitement and passion for the game, and a lot of knowledge, and I think it’s important to help build the game, and I don’t think Brandi has that.

“It’s just my opinion, and nothing else really matters, to be honest. What matters is tomorrow’s game against North Korea, playing at Old Trafford. The team’s excited. It’s my birthday. I don’t really care to answer any other questions about Brandi.”

The Twitter exchanges also attracted concern and a subsequent meeting among the U.S. team’s coaching staff and team captains to discuss the team’s image. Solo is known for her strong opinions, and she was kicked off the 2007 World Cup team for criticizing former coach Greg Ryan.

The U.S. will play North Korea on Tuesday at Old Trafford, the home playing field famous men’s squad, Manchester United. The stadium hasn’t hosted a women’s match since 1989 and an estimated record-crowd of 35,000 is expected.

James Raia is an editor and publisher in Sacramento, California. Visit his site: www.tourdefrancelife.com

Filed Under: Olympics, Social Media, Sports Social Media, Twitter

U.S. Open Gets Twitter-Crazy During Day 1

June 11, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Even though Mobile Sports Report is covering the U.S. Open live and in person, we almost didn’t need to be at the Olympic Club to get a feeling for what was going on, thanks to the multitude of tweets resonating Monday around golf’s biggest event.

With no cell-phone ban yet in place (that doesn’t happen until competition starts on Thursday) there were plenty of certified folks with mobile cellular devices, transmitting 140-character messages as well as pictures and videos from the fairways, greens, practice facilities and sponsor tents hovering on the southwest edge of San Francisco, one hill removed from the Pacific Ocean.

But why just talk about the tweets? Thanks to technology we can share some of our favorites. Why not start with the tour’s hottest player, last weekend’s champ Dustin Johnson, who tweets pretty darn regularly at @DJohnsonPGA. DJ today hit us with a bunch of pictures of his practice day at Olympic, which included a visit with the Most Interesting Man in Golf:

Golf writer extraordinare Geoff Shackelford was a twittering man possessed Monday, shooting little bits of video as well as cool snaps — like this one of USGA executive director Mike Davis greeting 1955 Open winner and Hogan-killer Jack Fleck.

Maybe the best place to get a wide fix of overall U.S. Open tweets was the Open’s own live updates page (which just shows up as “Twitter” on the USGA mobile app). That’s where we found out that Luke Donald, aka World No. 1 is cool enough to RT an answer to a fan request for a photo:

(Don’t everyone tweet @ Luke at once now.)

ESPN talent Scott Van Pelt also arrived on scene, and gave us all a view of his “office” for the week:

And the gear sponsors were all out tweeting heavily as well. From our friends at Nike Golf, a faraway picture of the Man, El Tigre himself:

With two more practice days we expect more tweets to be flying the innerwebs way from Olympic, even with its challenged cellular reception. Our favorite of the day comes from another recently smokin’ player and a personal MSR favorite (we so wanted him to win the PGA last year), Jason Dufner. Apparently the Duf is getting some good travel guides to the more lively areas of town. However it appears he may not be ready for the clothing-challenged scenery:

C’mon, Duf, it’s called the Castro — and it was hot out today! Just wait, they will probably be in your gallery tomorrow!

Filed Under: Apps, ESPN, Golf, iPhone, PGA, Social Media, Tiger Woods, Twitter, US Open Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Microsoft Slowly Pushing So.Cl Social Media Engine to Public

May 24, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Microsoft has expanded the scope of who can use its So.Cl (pronounced social) social media search technology to everybody after a quiet beta push, as it seeks to establish it as a mainstream player in the social media environment.

So.Cl is a search engine that is designed to find and share social media, enabling you to connect with other users that have similar searches and interests and hopefully create an engagement between the participants. It enables users to take an assortment of media such as video, texts and photos, combine them into posts and then share them.

It is one of the many efforts under development at the company’s FUSE Labs and Microsoft has taken a low and cautious rollout for the product, quite the opposite of some of its efforts in the past. The company designed the technology for students and select schools were the first beta sites including University of Washington and New York University.

The student focus is intentional as the company has said that it believes that the features of the program reflect on how schools are teaching and how students are learning today, and not just computer science or technical students but for a range of scholastic focuses.

While focused on students I wonder how this will evolve, assuming that it does get off the ground. New sports blogs, apps for teaching players what to look for in an NFL defense, with commentary and past results listed in the frame? I have seen some pretty advanced sports pages and the ability to bring a large number of like minded fans, say baseball stat people, with live video examples etc.. could be compelling.

The effort was decidedly low key and that of course might have simply been because Microsoft did not want to try to be heard over all of the noise coming from the Facebook IPO or just because it is taking a different approach to establishing the technology.

So far it has had mixed reviews (I have not tried it yet) with Digital Trends decidedly unimpressed and with Cnet much more impressed with all of the features that the service provides.

Filed Under: Apps, Baseball, Facebook, Fanatic Fans, Google, Microsoft, So.Cl, Social Media, Social Media Data, Sports Social Media, Sports Social Media Data Tagged With: , , ,
« Previous Page
Next Page »