these are all the ones i found using their official facebooks and sites

I’m from Portland and have been following @pdxtrailblazers along with many of my other Twitter friends. We’re pretty sure it’s the organization. In case you wanted to update your list!

Always enjoy your posts!

Kelsey

Memphis (@memgrizz) also got into the fray during the ’07 Draft. [http://twitter.com/memgrizz]

You’ll see that both of these teams have increased their presence on Twitter over the summer and into the ’08-09 seasons. I would expect to see a few other teams ramp up their presences on Twitter this season, as it can be plugged into blogs and team web sites as well as be a stand alone presence.

Regarding the discussion on openness and outreach, some sports properties (and non-sports too) I know of are hesitant to put a lot of effort into a channel like Twitter. The reason being that it does not have a proven business model and may disappear as quickly as it came. This seems hard to believe for those of us who use Twitter daily, but it is the reality. If anything, teams may turn to building social networking communities or building presences on more proven, sustainable social media channels rather than places like Twitter.

Feel free to use your comments on your blog and link back. I agree with a lot of what you say. But if a team has a full-time community manager (which it should by now), then it doesn’t have to wait and see on services like Twitter..there should be time for it.

Also, the ownership issue goes against what social media is and how the world is evolving. Instead of bringing people to their own sites, teams need to embrace places that their fans already are. Fans will appreciate that. Teams should never force people to get content one way or another just because they want to get people to opt-in…if they provide content that is valuable enough, people will opt-in anyway..though you could argue that an opt-in these days isn’t that much more important than a user that is engaged with the team on another platform/service.

Also, being on sites like Twitter and other social media platforms is a way for teams to increase the reach of its promotions, which should also make sponsors happy, since they’re reaching more people.

Anyways, that’s just how I feel about this. I appreciate your thoughts, and I do understand that teams have a finite amount of time and doing this stuff right is sometimes easier said than done.

Time – Yes, it is free to leverage Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, blogs, or any other social networking based service. But it still does take time, and if a team doesn’t have the time to deliver the right content through that channel, then just having a minimal presence will not be effective. If a team learns that their fan base is using a particular service (and this will vary A LOT by the sport), then you’ll see the team dedicate more time to that service.

Ownership – Teams try to offer as much content through their own services (web, email, mobile) that they’d prefer to drive users to these areas. In a way, offering content via Twitter decreasese the chances that the fan will subscribe to the team’s internal email or text service. Getting the user to opt-in directly is VERY important and it might not be worth the risk of losing this opt-in.

(Jason – do you mind if I use my comments here and run with this topic on my blog as well – I will link back of course!)

http://www.HalfBlogHalfAmazing.com