The Pac-12 Conference, one of college football’s most aggressive promoters of social media, today called on Oregon Ducks and UCLA Bruins fans to include #GoDucks and #GoBruins in their comments during tonight’s Pac-12 Football Championship Game.
The athletic conference is administrating to the hashtag battle as a means to increase fan engagement in tonight’s game between the No. 9 ranked Ducks and the un-ranked Bruins.
The Hashtag Battle Defined
Already underway, the Pac-12’s hashtag battle keeps score of the percentage of overall #GoDucks and #GoBruins tweets, and features the best Ducks and Bruins tweets in side-by-side scroll bars for the two teams.
The Ducks and Bruins are scheduled to kick off tonight at 8:30 E.S.T.
The hashtag battle could be more interesting than the game. Oregon is thirty-one and a half point favorites versus the Bruins, whose six win and six loss 2011 season is best described as mystifyingly erratic. A Rose Bowl stake goes to the winner.
Pac-12 uses simple, effective sports social media promo
The Pac-12 did a good job explaining its value-proposition to potential users in 120-characters or less.
Here’s how the Pac-12 promoted the battle on Twitter:
Gamespaces from Twitter Streams
In creating a simple read-out of the percentage of overall #GoDucks and #GoBruins tweets, the Pac-12 has produced a rudimentary gamespace from the Twitter stream.
Within the mobile sports industry, there are more sophisticated examples of this approach. One is GiveMojo, which incorporates Twitter within its gamespace, but also allows participants to buy extra points, and features referees who assign added value to particularly good tweets. At MobileSportsReport press time, GiveMojo was not offering the Oregon versus UCLA game within its gamespace.
Testing 1,2,3
The Pac-12 is on the ball in administrating to its hashtag battle. A post by MobileSportReport’s @BroApp, depicted below, referred to an historic UCLA game in which the 15-point underdog Bruins defeated No. 1 Ohio State in the 1976 Rose Bowl.
The MSR test tweet said,
#GoBruins A little John Sciarra magic tonight? It’d be as big an upset.
This tweet appeared almost instantly in the Pac-12 interface.
However, a second post, under hashtag #GoDucks, commented on the point spread. This tweet was not picked up by the Pac-12. So, the Pac-12 isn’t asleep at the switch in curating its Twitter rivalry.
Here’s what the Pac-12’s presentation looks like:
A post by MobileSportReport's BroApp immediately appeared in the Pac-12 interface. It said, "#GoBruins A little John Sciarra magic tonight? It'd be as big an upset." Another post, under hashtag #GoDucks commented on the point spread. It was not picked up by the Pac-12. Kudos Pac-12. You were not asleep at the switch.
UPDATE: Check out what Fox did after the game (thanks @tariq_ahmad for the pic):
