Tweeting to beat the media

I have returned from the East Coast. And my first post upon returning to California will be devoted again to Twitter. Since I declared that I thought tweeting was a trivial activity, I have been confronted with many examples of how it is indeed useful. I did not expect to dedicate so much of my blog to talking about Twitter, but it seems appropriate to use it to comment on another online communication tool.

Bill Simmons, known as The Sports Guy columnist in ESPN The Magazine, has provided my favorite example so far of a creative use of Twitter in his July 13th column:

"I resisted Twitter for months before caving and making it the deleted scenes to my DVD (in this case, columns and podcasts). I had always wanted a place to throw up quick one-liners and to pass along links I liked, even if I didn't fully realize it."

When I worked at the Daily Cal as a sports reporter, the sports desk had just launched its first blog, Bear Bytes, for a similar purpose. It was a place for us to write brief stories about our team or a player that did not fit into our preview or recap stories. Now the sports desk has opened up its own Twitter account, to comment on Cal sports on an even smaller scale. Look at what I just found there:

"Katie Dowd is working on a story about ... Twitter! How is Cal athletics using Twitter and why?9:05 AM Jul 3rd from web"

How about to level the playing field? See how college junior Katie Dowd explores the same questions, using the same tools as an ESPN columnist.

Back to Bill Simmons. Twitter is useful in his own work to find a place for his undeveloped commentary, but it is also useful for him to follow athletes' Twitter accounts, in case they break a big story. Kevin Love did just that on June 17, when he tweeted that Kevin McHale would not be returning to coach the Timberwolves next season, without realizing this was not yet public knowledge.

Simmons ponders: "How many stories will break on Twitter each week? How many athletes will get into trouble by writing something dumb? How many Twitter-related apologies will be issued per week?"

I wonder, how many Twitter-related apologies will be issued per week using Twitter?