Social Media

Tuesday there was an article in the sports section of the AJC, an ancient form of communication akin to telegraphy, pooh-poohing the use of TWITTER by college athletes.  It seems that Paul Hewitt, head basketball coach for Georgia Tech, and Mark Fox, his counterpart at Georgia, are discouraging their players’ tweets.  Some how these two coaches, and apparently there are others, got the notion that their players should actually get up, go to school, practice, play basketball, and “work to be better” (at what?) instead of constantly up-dating each other on shots made, weights lifted, who said what about whom in what tone of voice, and other vital details of life.   

These two Luddites went so far as to characterize TWEETS as distractions, and even to imply that 140 characters could cause problems for the sender and/or the receiver.  Worst of all, they cited a “study” that alleged over 71% of all TWEETS go unrecognized.      This citation reminds me of the question about the tree falling in the forest.  Well, excuse me while I go now to recognize 79 nontrivial new messages on my dumb phone.  My inbox is bursting.