Mashable, one of the web’s top tech and social media blogs ran a post by Chris Spagnuolo this past week titled Pro Cycling on Twitter: 48 People Who Aren’t Lance Armstrong, and guess who was #43?
43. @bikeride: Brent Soderberg from BikeRide.com provides live race updates and news about bicycling events and cycling in general.
I don’t know how much I contribute to the world of pro cycling, but I was also responsible for setting up the @espn_cycling feed (#36) when I worked at ESPN, and I also originally registered the @velonews account (#34) and had it updating with their RSS feed until recently when VeloNews took over managing the account. So, I guess I can take some credit for getting the world of cycling using the service.
I am not Lance Lance Armstrong, but I have taken his photo.
It is really pretty amazing to see how the world of pro cycling, and the bike industry has adopted the use of Twitter in the past few months. I’ve had a Twitter account for nearly 2 years now, and there have been some others within the cycling world who have been using Twitter for a long time, but after the biggest name in the sport, Lance Armstrong, became a power user of the micro blogging service (he now has over 200,000 followers), it really took off in the pro cycling world.
In response to the Mashable post, Joel Price, who works in new media for the San Diego Chargers tweeted “Twitter is saving professional Cycling … other sports should take notice”. And then after Scott Zagarino replied the “You’d think other sports would get the hint?”, Joel replied ” some will, mainstream sports will treat it more like a broadcast medium and miss the point. At least at first.”
This has been my experience working within the mainstream sports media. When a new medium comes along the first response is to try to figure out how to spam the service with content instead of understanding what social media is. Social Media’s power is in joining the conversation, not interupting the conversation.
Why has pro cycling done such a great job of adopting Twitter? I think one reason is that compared to “stadium” sports, pro cycling is a “mobile” sport that takes place out on the open roads, and a service like Twitter that can easily be updated from mobile devices seems like a perfect fit for telling part of the story.
This was evident in the recent Amgen Tour of California stage race. The first few days of the race when weather caused issues for live TV coverage, Twitter users were being kept more up to date on what was happening in the race than the television announcers on Versus. Team managers, mechanics, and staff were tweeting race updates from the team cars, and fans were taking and posting Twitpics from the side of the road.
Can other sports benefit from Twitter? Absolutely. The NBA’s Shaquille O’Neal has more followers than Lance Armstrong (it is close), and you can follow ESPN, or many teams like the San Diego Chargers (thanks to Joel). The biggest power of twitter, and other social media tools, is the ability to connect directly to the people who are interested in what you are doing (including fans, and potential customers), and have a conversation with them.
I still think there is something unique to the sport of pro cycling with competitions that last multiple days, in places all over the world, where you can’t get the whole story from television, and that makes a medium like Twitter more suited to it. Also, major American sports are used to being covered by all the mainstream media, while cycling being more of a niche sport is more open to alternative forms of media to promote itself.
Also See
Carton Reid maintains a list of Bike Trade Tweeters
CyclingUSA Blog: My new blog on American Pro Cycling
