Posts Tagged: ‘ESPN’
It seems like there’s a new story every week about complications involving Twitter and sporting events. There was the big story about the SEC banning all forms of social media from SEC events (they’ve backed off a little since the original announcement). Teams in the NBA are struggling to let players creating more fan interaction without affecting the games themselves. Several teams in the NFL have debated how much information players can share on Twitter (or if they can have an account at all). Then there’s ESPN’s policy to limit the use of employee Twitter accounts to messages that promote the company. It seems that 2009′s sporting season is as much about the social networking service as the action on the courts, fields and parks.
Now tennis officials are beginning to look into how to handle the 140-character craze sweeping through entertainment. Howard Fendrich of the Associated Press reports that tennis authorities at the U.S. Open have posted signs warning players not to share too much about the tournament on their personal Twitter accounts.
It’s not because the authorities are worried about the messages affecting the outcome of matches. It has more to do with a desire to avoid feeding information to the gambling community. If players send a message about how they’re feeling on a particular day or whether they noticed another player favoring one leg over the other, that could lead to a frenzy of activity within gambling circles. Odds would change rapidly to reflect the new information.
Some days it seems like the real purpose of the Internet is to provide a platform for power struggles between massive companies. Last year the big story was Google and Microsoft playing tug-of-war with Yahoo. This morning, the story is about The Walt Disney Company announcing that it will start providing short form videos to YouTube.
According to AP News, Disney has agreed to provide content to YouTube under an ad-revenue sharing agreement. Currently the company allows full episodes of its shows to broadcast on ABC.com, Fancast and AOL. But this agreement with YouTube only covers shorter videos and excerpts, not full episodes.
Earlier in the week, there were rumors floating around that Disney was in talks with Hulu, a popular video site. Hulu currently serves video content from providers like NBC Universal and Fox. Had the Walt Disney Company elected to move videos to Hulu, it would have created a more robust service.
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