New Facebook Changes Will Impact Sports

Facebook recently had their annual F8 conference yesterday and they will be making a significant change to its format. Naturally, anytime Facebook redesigns itself, it affects all sectors, especially music, movies, and sports.

Here is an interview with Paciolan Dir of Social Media & Consumer Marketing Matt Kautz by Sports Business Journal Daily on how the new timeline feature will affect sports on Facebook.

Revolutionary Stadium Technology for Social Media

Update at 4:17: Co-Innovator of FanCam, Tinus le Roux tweeted to me that the FanCam technology is now up to 20 BILLION Pixels. They will be updating their website very soon with that info!

My roommate, Steve, showed me this amazing new 360 camera technology that allows any fan in a stadium or arena to find themselves in the crowd. Yes, that even means the drunken fool in the section 543 can sober up and pick himself out of the 50,000 people in the stadium (as long as he remembers roughly where he sat). This new technology is called the FanCam.

Here is an excerpt from the website. "Technically speaking, Fan Cam is 5 BILLION PIXEL social media engagement platform. It combines the latest in GigaPixel technology with customized social media solutions to create a 'one of its kind', immersive fan experience". 5 Billion pixels... when I first heard that, I pictured Dr. Evil sitting in his chair chuckling and stroking Mr. Bigglesworth. Then I checked it out for myself: Rugby in South Africa and Steelers vs. Jets AFC Championship. This is incredibly legitimate.

Gathering the Clouds

Gathering the Clouds is a weekly entry that scours the web bringing together the most important links on sports and social media.

• Incredible article on Athletes and Social Media and how some play the social game right and others decide to use social media to talk to their mistress. And we thought that Brett Favre was the only one who couldn't keep it in his Wranglers.
• Check out information on the IOC's social media policy for London 2012. Here's an excerpt: "The IOC recommends that postings, blogs or tweets should be in a first-person, diary-type format and should not be in a journalistic style". Now there's some regulation... sounds more like Berlin 1936.
• Great article by Kalia Strong that delves into the social media policies for London 2012, NFL, and UFC. With UFC's pioneering deregulation policy on social media by President Dana White, the league is now renamed the Ultimate Facebook Championship.
• A post on the dangers of mixing social media and athletes by Dave Thomas. Forget about cocaine, this is the new vice of athletes. Love the part about the Texas Tech football player tweeting about being offended that the coach is late to the meeting. What ever happened to complaining to your teammates in the huddle? Isn't that what they do half the time in there?

Which sporting event will break the Twitter record?

If you didn't hear, the Women's World Cup final between the US and Japan this past summer broke the Twitter record for most tweets per second for a sports event at 7,196. Just to give you some perspective of the rise of Twitter, the largest American sporting event, SuperBowl XLV, had 4,064 tweets per second back in February 6, 2011.

Of course, the US-Japan Final had the benefit of Japan tweeting in huge numbers as well, plenty more than for the SuperBowl.

But no doubt, the popularity of Twitter is growing larger and larger and it will just be a matter of time before the record is broken. If Beyonce's announcement of having a baby at the MTV Video Music Awards can garner 8,868 tps (tweets per second, folks), then imagine what the next sports event will attain in terms of tweeting? (And this raises a puzzling query for me... why do so many people care that Beyonce is having a baby? Was it an immaculate conception? Did all the single ladies really have to put their hands up and tweet about it?)

So, let me know your thoughts. What is the next sports event that will break the 7,196 tps record set by the US-Japan Woman's World Cup Final? Do we have to wait until February for the SuperBowl, or will another event take the tweeting trophy?

NFL has top two TV programs in Social Media hits

There is a wonderful website called SocialGuide.com that covers TV's popularity through social media comments in real time. SocialGuide gives the top 5 shows at any given time along with the number of social media comments and percentage of buzz (the percentage of total SocialGuide population that is talking about that program).

Social Guide has specific tabs to filter by subject, one of them being sports so you can compare all sports programming.

Looking at Social Guide for last week, the NFL had the top two most commented programs. The number one slot went to the Green Bay Packers and New Orleans Saints league opener, which had a thrilling ending. The second spot went to the Cowboys-Jets matchup on Sunday night, which saw the Cowboys give up 17 unanswered Jet points in the 4th quarter to give away the game. (Me thinks that the record tweeting to #quarterbackbetterthanRomo probably started soon after this game. And rightly so, Romo was as effective at passing that night as Cheney is at shooting quail).

The two NFL games topped all other programs with a large margin. Jersey Shore came in 3rd place (Dear American Citizen... really?! Jersey Shore is what you want to talk about?) with the GOP debates coming in at 4th place.

America's priorities: Sports, Sports, Trashy TV, Politics. Sounds about right.