ESPN uses various different types of social media to interact with their viewers, listeners, and sports fans. They also utilize social media to give people up-to-date headlines about sports news. The main social media application that I will be discussing is Twitter. Twitter is a free social networking website that offers microblogging. On Twitter, users can send and receive messages called "tweets." Users can also subscribe to other user's tweets, which is called following someone and people who are subscribing to your tweets are called followers. You can go to Twitter and create your own account and begin tweeting! I have created this video to demonstrate how to create a Twitter account and some of the basic features that Twitter has to offer.
ESPN utilizes Twitter, Facebook, and phone applications. They link all of these applications to their main website, ESPN. On their website, you can view twitter feeds and share your favorite articles or news to Facebook or Twitter. In my next video, I preview all of ESPN's social media outlets including, ESPN Twitter and ESPN Facebook.
ESPN engages their fans in many different ways. As I stated earlier, ESPN is very active on Twitter and with their followers. They have recently become more active by providing Twitter accounts to some of their most popular television shows such as, PTI and Around the Horn. These shows promote their Twitter accounts to be able to solicit questions and comments from their viewers on air. Also, many ESPN television personalities have Twitter accounts and interact with their followers. The Business of Sports states that it is ideal that ESPN would like that all fans go directly to their main website for information, but with the many alternate websites and social media outlets there are, companies need to be willing to go outside their own site and find where their fans are gathering information. and seek out their fans in other places.
ESPN ScoreCenter
ESPN provides a several different types of phone applications, but the most popular and heavily downloaded is ESPN ScoreCenter. You are to stay on top of all the results you care about with one-tap access to your personalized set of teams and scores. ScoreCenter brings you fast and reliable game details like plays, key stats, leaderboards, boxscores and scoring summaries.You are able to personalize ESPN ScoreCenter with only updates from your favorite teams. This application has received some criticism. According to Know your Mobile, they consider this applications a "jack of all trades", but if you wanted specific results other than just basic scores, this is not the right application for you. However, ESPN ScoreCenter has been very successful with users and downloads. Social Media and the Business of Sports
Within the Sports Nation, the fans are always craving for more ways to be involved with the reporters, commentators, teams, and players. ESPN is jumping on the this situation by opening up their Facebook and Twitter with polls, questions, and comments for the fans to respond back. This allows the fan to feel more connected to ESPN through applications they use in their daily life. I believe that this will make the fan favorite ESPN for their sports news. According to True Hoop, "Facebook feels the next major revolution in sports will involve the topic of fan interaction with mediums like Facebook allowing us to connect in “fundamentally new ways.” Most fans will immediately "check-in" from their phones at sporting events, mention their favorite players on twitter, and other ways of connecting through social media. ESPN is providing short cuts to the latest headlines by offering them on all of the popular social media websites.
Criticism of ESPN and Social Media
ESPN has received a lot of criticism for various reasons involving their activity with social media. The first came from their release of ESPN'S Social Media Guidelines. ESPN released these guidelines to their employees to attempt to put some control over their social media usage. Some examples of these guidelines are, "Prior to engaging in any form of social networking dealing with sports, you must receive permission from the supervisor as appointed by your department head." Also, "The first and only priority is to serve ESPN sanctioned efforts, including sports news, information and content." Some people think that these guidelines are bit too extreme. According to Brian Solis, a media influence blogger, "it severely hamper its own staff’s room for professional growth."
They have also been compared to the Bleacher Report. Business Insider states that Bleacher Report is growing much faster within social media compared to the larger and more popular, ESPN. Bleacher Report is steadily catching up to ESPN's web traffic, which is largely due to the social media additions to their website. They embraced the idea that sports is an overall social experience and have started to give fans that experience online. In this article they post several different photo comparisons of the two websites to show the differences in social media presence.
Future for ESPN
ESPN is a successful company with many dedicated fans. Many people would say they have a monopoly over sports news. I believe that they will steadily become more involved with social media over the years. They are adapting well to the growth and phenomenon of social media and will continue to do so. However, I do believe that they will have some tough competition if they do not step up their social media presence on their own website. They need to be able to link on the applications to provide a smooth connection to the social media website and their own home website. I do believe they are successful with fan interaction on Twitter and Facebook. They have millions of followers and likes from people who interact with mentions and wall posts daily. I believe if they continue with this much activity on their sites, it will on flourish more.
