About two months ago, I jumped on the bandwagon and became one of the ~5 million (probably more) Twitter users. Not that I need another distraction - between web-surfing, blogging, tweeting, and facebooking (is that a word?), I've got my hands full of "-ings" I'd rather be doing than working.
But over the past few weeks, I've found that Twitter has helped me consolidate all of my procrastination activities into one central terminal. I just pull up my favorite Twitter client on my iPhone, and I'm instantly updated with this morning's headlines, last night's American Idol results, today's woot, and the Big Cactus's most recent act of "Shaqness." In short, I am able to satisfy all my time-wasting desires, 140 characters at a time.
I'll get to the part that's relevant to 5brownguys... What I like the most about Twitter is the way that athletes have embraced it. (It was Charlie Villanueva's infamous half-time tweet that actually inspired me to sign-up.) Where a lot of actors and musicians tend to have Twitter feeds that are very 3rd person in nature and likely managed by publicists or poorly-paid interns, athletes have taken a more organic approach, giving us a real glimpse into their professional and personal lives.
Lance Armstrong tweets multiple times a day; he posts his training schedule, photos from rides, Lance Armstrong Foundation updates, and drug test results. He even shares the details of his day-to-day family life, where he's eating dinner, and when he's at his son's flag football games. When Lance broke his clavicle in Spain this March, I heard it from him before it hit ESPN!
While the NBA and many of its teams seem to be using Twitter primarily as a marketing tool during the playoffs, a large number of ballers have jumped onto Twitter. Steve Nash and Jason Richardson join their "very quotatious" teammate as Sun's tweeters. We can follow Paul Pierce's and Dwight Howard's path through the playoffs. Chris Bosh and Tyson Chandler can keep us up to speed on their summer vacation plans. Even the legend Kareem Abdul Jabbar has joined the party.
No, Twitter wont give you box scores, fancy statistics, or in depth analysis, but it can give you a great snapshot of what is happening NOW straight from the horse's mouth. Having this kind of access to the thoughts of your favorite athletes really brings them down to Earth and makes you realize that despite their superstar talent, they are regular people, just like you and I. Personally, I find that very inspiring - it gives my tweets/blogs/facebook posts some meaning. Take Shaq for example. Sure, my circle of Twitter followers is many orders of magnitude smaller than Shaq's (he'll probably hit 1 million any time now), but he's tweeting on his BlackBerry at the same time that I'm on my iPhone. If his words can reach so many people, maybe mine can to.
Tweet tweet.
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If you are interested in finding your favorite athletes on Twitter, there are plenty of useful tools to locate them such as We Follow.
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