You are here: Home / Archives for Twitter

Can Twitter Save the NBA Slam Dunk Contest?

February 24, 2012 by 9 Comments

For a long time now, I thought that the NBA’s All-Star Slam Dunk contest was something that just needed to die. Way back in the day, before every single dunk was posted to YouTube and every game was on cable, it was kind of fun to put a spotlight on guys who you hadn’t seen that much of (Dominique Wilkins) and more from the guys you couldn’t get enough of (Michael Jordan).

In its early days it was a lot of fun, with surprise winners like Spud Webb. But then it stagnated, the stars left for a while and in recent years it became a bit of a clown show, with guys jumping over each other, and then last year when Blake Griffin posterized an automobile. I mean, the guy can dunk but I thought the sideshow was stupid.

In perhaps a nod to the event’s tediousness, it is now just one round — three dunks — for four players. And to make it even more trendy, the NBA and sponsor Sprite have turned to Twitter. In addition to voting for the best dunkers via text message and on the NBA.com site, fans will be able to tweet with the hashtag #SpriteSlam and a letter corresponding to one of the four players involved, the Houston Rockets’ Chase Budinger, the Indiana Pacers’ Paul George, the Minnesota Timberwolves’ Derrick Williams and the Utah Jazz’s Jeremy Evans. I am guessing the final instructions will be spelled out during the broadcast on TNT, which you will have to watch anyway to see the dunks.

Are you excited? Here is the official word on how it works:

A new format will be implemented for the 2012 competition. The contest will consist of only one round and each competitor will execute three dunks. Fan voting will open after all four players have completed their first dunk. Previously, the Sprite Slam Dunk contest consisted of two rounds, with the first round scored by a panel of judges which determined two finalists.

The competition starts Saturday at 8:30 p.m. Eastern, live on TNT. And just in case you can’t get enough of guys dunking over cars, here’s last year’s finals recap.
UPDATE: If you need more Twitter, Chase Budinger will be holding a tweet-chat today:

#SpriteSlam contestant @ is doing a Twitter Q&A at 1pm EST, tweet your questions with #AskChase

February 25, 2012 10:37 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite
@TwitterSports

Twitter Sports

 

 

Filed Under: NBA, TNT, Twitter Tagged With: ,

The Viva! Vision: Former NFL Players Create ‘App Enablement’ Firm for Athletes, Celebs

February 21, 2012 by 4 Comments

Joe Tafoya (left) and Kerry Carter of Viva! Vision, at the AT&T Developer Summit. (Screen shot courtesy AT&T)

Anytime you go to a “developer’s conference” hosted by some large firm, you can pretty much count on at least several instances where groups of geeks are shepherded to the stage for their 15 seconds of fame. Look! The big-company execs will say. Developers who believe in us!

At the recent AT&T Developers Summit ahead of CES, however, there was a twist: During the meet-the-developers segment the audience saw 6-foot-4 Joe Tafoya take the stage and tell a quick tale about how he and some other ex-NFL players were getting into the development game, previewing a cool forthcoming “locker room” app featuring their friend, NBA star Jason Terry.

After shaking hands with some AT&T execs and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Tafoya was gone, but not after causing no small amount of buzz among the thousands in the audience. Ex-NFL guys? Doing sports apps? Cool! And then everyone went back to checking their email.

Tafoya, however, stuck around the summit, wandering the exhibit-hall booths with one of his partners, Kerry Carter, an ex-NFL running back who is still playing in Canada. Towering over most of the real geeks present, Tafoya and Carter were happy to stop and talk about Viva! Vision, a company formed in a unique manner and with a unique purpose. Over several phone and email interviews and some research we have a fuller picture of Viva! and what we think its purpose is: Though Tafoya and co. may not exactly agree with this definition, we see Viva! Vision as not a true app development company but instead an “app enabler.”

What do we mean by that? In Viva! Vision’s case it means that Tafoya and his partners aren’t doing any of the actual coding of apps but instead are bringing to the table their ability to bring people to the table — on one hand, corralling talented technology outsourcing firms to help develop cool, custom apps, and on the other hand bringing in athletes, entertainers and other celebrities who want to maximize their personal brand via online channels. How did this all get started and where might it end up? We’ll need more than a short blog post to tell you.

Next: From the NFL cut line to the command line

Pages: 1 2 3 4

Filed Under: Apps, AT&T, Athlete to Follow, NFL, Super Bowl Tagged With: , , ,

United Way Seeks to Leverage NFL’s Social Media Strength

February 20, 2012 by Leave a Comment

The United Way, one of the largest charities in the United States is partnering with the NFL in an effort to leverage the football league’s huge social presence into heightened awareness of the charity and what it does.

The two entities are already long term partners, having worked together for almost four decades and it has been a common sight during NFL broadcasts to see one star or another stand up and talk about how he is working with the charity for the good of the community.

In addition players volunteer to work in the community one day a week performing a number of services including encouraging kids to stay in school, serving meals to the elderly, and helping to build homes for low-income families.

Now the United Way is seeking to take the relationship to another level, as the NFL’s success has helped it establish itself as a huge presence not just on the airwaves but also online and in a variety of social media outlets.
The charity is currently hiring people that it will call player promoters, and they will be assigned to promote specific NFL players, according to a piece in Mashable.

The NFL Player Promoter program will couple a promoter with a player in an effort to drive increased traffic to that player’s specific social media accounts. The players’ accounts will of course have a United Way message and so it will enable the charity to reach additional fans. According to Mashable the NFL has 4.6 million Facebook friends and 2 million Twitter followers.

Of course some players also have significant following in one or both of these places as well. Steelers’ Troy Polamalu has 2 million Facebook fans and 400,000 following him on Twitter, while Chad Ochocinco has a combined following of over 5 million, according to FanPagelist.com

However it should be noted that not all are United Way spokesmen. It is interesting to look at who are the most recommended accounts to follow on Twitter by CBS and to see how heavily followed some of the analyst and news sites are as well.

I believe that we will start seeing a fight in the future for additional partnerships, both charity ones such as the United Way as well as advertising ones in not only the NFL but in all major sports. Social media is an excellent way to reach fans, especially ones on the go, and it will be interesting to see how the leagues manage to monetize this trend.

Filed Under: Athlete to Follow, CBS Sports, Facebook, Mashable, NFL, NFL Network, Social Media, Twitter Tagged With: , , ,

Major Apps Designed to Data Harvest Apple iOS Users

February 17, 2012 by 4 Comments

Is there a mole in your iPhone?

Are iPhone apps stealing data off your smartphone?
In a general sense it looks like the answer is yes, even if you as an individual are unaffected. A series of studies has shown that it looks like the market as a whole has not been immune to this problem but it is running rampart and is lead by some of the leading app developers.

While to some it might seem that harvesting data such as contacts is a minor issue consider that may use their smartphones for both work and personal use and there could be a good deal of proprietary information on the phone.

While the current list of offenders comes from the world of corporate app developers the next generation destined to exploit this issue will no doubt be hackers, something that could pose a major issue to all concerned.

A study by VentureBeat comes after a developer called Path was caught in the act harvesting names, numbers and e-mail addresses and storing that information on its servers. Venture Beat found that this is just the tip of the iceberg and that it is very likely that an iPhone user has one or more of the apps involved.

VentureBeat used a program called mitmproxy that is a traffic monitoring utility to observe data traffic and found that a host of applications were uploading personal data from the iPhones, in some cases unencrypted.

A list of some of the players is a who’s who of apps, much over shadowing the much smaller and less popular Path. Included in this list is Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Foursquare, Foodspotting, Yelp, and Gowalla. They do not all do exactly the same thing but it is an interesting read over at the VentureBeat site.

At the same time it appears that Google has developed work around for safeguards in Apple’s Safari browser that enable Google to place tracking cookies that circumvent Apple’s default privacy settings. The workaround affected not just iPhones but Mac computers, iPads, and iPod Touch.

Google has said that it has disabled the code that enabled the actions and said that it was unintentional. However a complaint has been filed against the company with the FTC.

Apps for the iOS platform from Apple are in violation of Apple’s guidelines, which prohibits the app from sending information about a user without their permission. The company said that it is working to tighten this up in the future, according to Enterprise Mobility Today.

However it is not just iOS apps that are an issue here. The Federal Trade Commission has just issued a warning that smartphone apps can invade a child’s privacy and advocates are calling for greater safeguards. I wonder if this market segment, largely left to its own devices will start to see the advent of more, and increasingly tougher regulations due to the actions of a few developers.

Filed Under: Apple, Apps, FTC, Google, iPad, iPhone, Smartphone, Social Media, Tablets, The New York Times, Top News, Twitter Tagged With: , , ,

GMR Survey Pinpoints how Sports Fans use Social Media

February 13, 2012 by 1 Comment

The folks over at GMR Marketing have put together a nice infographic on sports and social media based on a survey it performed with fans to see how and why they preferred their sports and a look at the impact that new delivery methods have had on more traditional ones such as television and radio.

The survey was broken down into five easy to follow sections pinpointing fan interests and revealing a few interesting tidbits such as fans today are ten times as likely to check Facebook or Twitter for breaking sports news than tune into sports radio. Of course considering some of the callers I have heard on sports radio they may not be able to use Twitter or Facebook.

The five sections cover the popularity of social media in overall sports media; how sports fans will check in with social media anywhere, even church; a follow up on how fans will use social media while watching games; a list of some of the top sports areas being followed on Twitter and an uptake on how advertising is viewed.

A few take always were that a majority of people not mind or are positive about advertising, which is good news for sites trying to make a buck; people follow top sports reporters and sites that have rumors- I guess they are not the same. One last note is that 33% of fans will check out how an event is gong even in a business meeting-where are you right now?

Head on over and check out what they have found in this space.

Filed Under: Athlete to Follow, Facebook, Sports Social Media, Twitter Tagged With: , ,

AT&T, Golf Channel Missing the ‘Tiger’ Opp With No Online Video for Pebble Beach

February 10, 2012 by 15 Comments

For the second day in a row, we are incredibly frustrated at the lack of any online video opportunity to watch Tiger Woods in his PGA season debut at the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. Though the Golf Channel has live coverage today and yesterday, the unique three-course setup for the Pebble Beach Pro-Am means no Tiger TV Thursday or Friday since there are apparently only camera crews at the Pebble Beach course and nothing from the other two courses being used, Spyglass and Monterey Peninsula.

So the reason Tiger isn’t on TV is that he played Spyglass Thursday, and is playing Monterey Peninsula today. We get it, because that means that Tiger will be on TV Saturday and Sunday, playing both days in front of the CBS cameras. But it’s an oversight not to have the game’s biggest draws on some kind of live media for the first two days.

This is a huge missed opportunity for the tournament and for Golf Channel, since there are probably millions of fans like me who would tune in online to catch some Tiger action even while at work. It’s hard to believe that with AT&T adding Wi-Fi clouds to the greater Monterey Peninsula to give fans at the tourney better wireless coverage that we couldn’t at least get someone with a GoPro camera on their head to follow Tiger around and stream that video? Hello sponsor opportunity!

Seriously, not having an online component is really a big error especially for events like golf tournaments where there may be an outsized interest in a single player instead of the traditional multi-camera, multi-announcer setup. I mean, online I have been able to follow what Tiger is doing in words; meanwhile on the Golf Channel they are showing some celebrity comedian eating a plate of ribs. I couldn’t hit the off switch quicker. So tell me how that strategy makes sense either to the event or the sponsors.

Note: the best places to follow El Tigre online today are the Golf Channel home page, where writer Jason Sobel is doing a hole-by-hole Tiger recap in real time. You can also follow Stephanie Wie, who is Tweeting Tiger’s round live. But really, AT&T and Golf Channel, you shoulda done better.

Filed Under: AT&T, CBS Sports, Golf, Golf Channel, PGA, Twitter Tagged With: , ,
« Previous Page
Next Page »