Social Networking and Baseball
Twitter and Facebook…all the cool kids are doing it. I’ll be the first to admit that they can be time-wasters…but they are also very useful, too. You can Tweet and ask for advice, for anything from where’s a good place to eat to how to get rid of blackheads, and it’s likely someone will respond with a good answer.
A lot of the minor league baseball teams have Twitter and/or Facebook accounts. They most often use these to talk about upcoming games and promotions, to get people to come on out to the ballpark. But also, they interact one-on-one with the fans, as well. It could be anything from a simple “thanks for coming out to the game yesterday” to help and advice. I’d imagine they’d also use Twitter to let fans know of important updates such as changed game times, rain delays, etc. Say we’re on our way up to Manchester for a Fisher Cats game, and the weather is iffy. If they end up deciding to call the game off due to weather, they could Tweet this, I’d get it on my phone, and we can just turn back and head home, rather than wasting all that gas driving all the way up there.
For instance…we have tickets to tomorrow’s PawSox game. If Mike were not in the hospital, he’d be driving us down to McCoy. But I really don’t like driving, especially since I’m long due for an eye exam (although I passed the vision test last year when I got my license renewed). So I’m keeping my driving down to a bare minimun and using public transit, even though I hate it.
So I am planning to take the commuter rail from Back Bay Station to the South Attleboro station, which is right on the MA/RI line. But I needed a way to get from there to the ballpark, so I put out a Tweet asking if anyone knew of cab companies in the area. I would think that there would be a cab stand at the station, but what if there are no cabs sitting there? I’d have to call one, but I had no idea who to call. I wanted to come armed with a few phone numbers, yanno?
So I got two responses, one via Facebook (I have it set so that all of my Twitter stuff is also posted on Facebook), and the other on Twitter, directly from the PawSox. I had put @PawSox in the Tweet, so it came their attention. They even told me that if I had trouble getting a taxi, to call them at the stadium and they’d help me out. Now that’s service!
I will soon be adding a list of Twitter and Facebook pages for all of the teams that I blog about here in my sidebar, so you can follow/friend them, too.



