Thursday, July 17, 2014

Athletes Dominating the Social Media Game

Image result for twitter logo Professional athletes are now intertwined with social media, connecting with fans and sharing their day to day lives is considered a normal thing. This is supposed to be a great opportunity for a sports community and fans to all mingle and bring another up. Unfortunately, not everyone used social media for good. When comparing threats and insults to strict organizational rules that change every other month, it’s hard for anyone to keep their profiles “perfect”.


“ Back to 500. Yess!!!! “500” means where doing good. Way to Play Hard Guys. “ -YUNGBUCK3


Imagine being fined $7,500 for a positive tweet about a great win that you sent out. That's what happened with Jennings, apparently there’s a violation hidden in the fine print. Events like this are ridiculous and only take away from the greatness of the game.


Later Jennings tweeted, “I understand I got fined, but 7500? For being happy over a win, you would of thought I said something bad. I mean it was a big win for us.”


With all these terms and conditions on when an athlete can use their own personal account, they lost their own freedom of speech. They’re no longer able to hold their own identity which could be extremely frustrating.


On the other hand, there are athletes out there with such a strong and loyal fan base that it is basically a sense of power over even millions of other people. Kobe Bryant has built a throne of more than 17 million fans on Facebook and more than three million on Twitter. That is one athlete reaching a large portion of Americans. On a more worldwide sport, the legendary soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo has acquired almost 100 million fans on Facebook and Twitter combined! Image courtesy of Mahmoud Silva

When considering these social media giants, perhaps the basic and original meaning behind rules for social media wasn't a bad thing. Attempting to manage these posts that influence such a large audience is a fair or safe idea. Although it’s sad to think that the search of finding the perfect balance of power and freedom of speech for these athletes may be a never ending chase.

No comments:

Post a Comment