Character counts when on Twitter
By Will Webber | The New MexicanPosted: 2/3/2012, 10:00 PM Mountain time
It was about two weeks ago that this publication's new online editor -- himself a former sports scribe, no less -- set up a Twitter account for The New Mexican's sports department.
Me likey.
The handle (is that what it's called?) is @sfnmsports.
Still not sure what a hashtag is, nor have I mastered the art of texting linguistics, but it's a safe bet we're onto something big.
Like most middle-aged people who work lousy hours, cover sports and grew up in an age of Atari, Nintendo and the initial stages of push-button telephones (which describes most newspaper hacks, by the way), this newfangled marriage of Facebook, Twitter and all forms of social media initially felt foreign.
Almost too new to register a meaningful response in the crusty brains of a professional journalist whose first love was a notebook and a corner seat in the press box.
There was some initial resistance, sure.
But this Twitter thing is sort of addictive.
It allows us to play with our cellphones and watch sports all at the same time. The only thing better is an all-you-can-eat coupon to the concession stand.
In 140 characters or fewer, you can update the masses with random thoughts or, in our case, breaking news and scoring updates. And the occasional photo and video.
For now, all we've done is pretty much give our followers running scores from the games we're covering at the time.
The updates provided from the Albuquerque Hope Christian-
St. Michael's boys and girls basketball games earlier this week were pushed around the Internet like a puck on ice.
One coach called to say thanks for providing continuous scoring updates from a particular game because its outcome affected everyone else in the district.
Pretty neat.
Eventually we might push the envelope like some of the people we've chosen to follow. Like those who felt the need to tell everyone that they're in the mood for grabbing a bite to eat at a sushi bar, commenting on a friend's designer T-shirt line or going gangsta about something one of your buddies did during a night out.
Not sure what half of the tweets mean, but that's the point of social media these days. It's not about depth as much as it is about splashing your gibberish online for the world to see.
So here's hoping no one minds if this paper's sportswriters pull up a chair at the Twitter table, because the early signs suggest we might be hitting our stride before too long.
Seems we might just be a good entity to follow come the high school state basketball tournament in March.
When those of you who can't make it to Albuquerque to watch your favorite teams take their shot at history, you can rest assured those of us here will be happy to flood your Twitter account with the latest 4-1-1.
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