Note: All Habs is co-hosting the Tweetup in Montreal with the NHL.
NHL Tweetup events to be held in 21 cities
DMNews
April 15 2009
NHL fans in 21 cities in the US and Canada will be able to participate in the first-ever NHL Tweetup and mark the beginning of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
A Tweetup is a real-world meeting between people who know each other through the popular online microblogging site Twitter.
“As we carve out a niche for ourselves as the digital sports league, it seemed appropriate to launch the playoffs with a digital media event,” said Michael DiLorenzo, director of corporate communications at the NHL.
In true Twitter fashion, the event started from a single message posted to Twitter by a hockey fan (@dani3boyz) to an NHL employee (@umassdilo) regarding an idea about organizing a Tweetup specifically for NHL Twitterers. It evolved onto party kicking off the Stanley Cup Playoffs at the league’s store in NYC. From there, another fan (@hockeyskates) tweeted the idea to have these tweetups take place in various locations all over the US and Canada. From there, fans in other cities expressed their interest in holding their own events. One fan (@goaliegirl) even created a Web site, www.NHLTweetup.com, where tweetup hosts could post information regarding their events and locations as well as information about how to RSVP for the various local parties.
“This is really a fan-oriented event that has grown organically because of them,” said DiLorenzo. “Twitter was the catalyst allowing us to rally people to kick off the start of the playoffs.”
Some of the cities hosting NHL Tweetup events on April 15 include Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Philadelphia and Toronto. Montreal’s NHL Tweetup will be held on Thursday, April 16, to watch the first game of the Montreal-Boston series.
Several NHL employees began Tweeting on behalf of the league last summer, but to date there is no official Twitter strategy. “We are starting to put some discipline around this,” DiLorenzo said.
In recognition of how big an event the Stanley Cup playoffs are to the NHL, the league recently gave over the content on its Web site, www.nhl.com, to more in-depth coverage of teams and other information around the playoffs, and is calling its Stanley Cup content The Portal. The Portal will stay up throughout the duration of the playoffs, from mid-April to mid-June.
Thanks for giving the background on this event…it’s awesome how social media lets the fans get so involved in the game they love.
Sooooo….if we participate, does that make us TWITS?
Seriously though, it seems that there are far more potential forums to discuss hockey (or any other matter) available on the Internet at the moment, than there are free hours in the day to participate in them. Including this one, I might add.
It’s a bit like dropping in on someone’s party to announce to all the guests that there is a better party over at your house, and they are all welcome to attend.
I think it’s awesome that among all the explosive social networking tools out there, twitter is the one that is bringing us all together, not only in 140 character bursts, but now on each other’s forums/blogs/sites and in person as well.
A real testament to it’s unifying abilities!
My experience with “explosive social networking tools….(with)…unifying abilities” was in the hype surrounding the 2004 U.S. Presidential campaign of Howard Dean. The whole Meetup/Blog Power phenomenon turned out pretty disastrously for the two candidates who bought into it, Dean and Wesley Clark. It was anything but “unifying”, most of the exchanges there couldn’t be spoken aloud in public.
Admittedly there isn’t much at stake in this situation, comparitavely speaking, but I don’t think the forum or the format changes human nature. Everyone goes in with an agenda, and that agenda doesn’t change. Everyone wants to be heard and appreciated, no one wants to listen. It’s a vanity thing.
On the topic of blogsites, did anyone read Elliot Freidman’s speculation about Gainey’s future on his cbc.ca blog? Freidman pretty much repeats a lot of the things I’ve said here, including the statement that (according to someone close to Gainey), the chances of his returning next season are no more than 50/50. Of course a long playoff run could change that in a hurry. I hope for Gainey’s sake the team manages that. I’m not always thrilled with his management decisions, but I would like to see him go out with his head high. Mind you, he didn’t seem willing to grant that same courtesy to his longtime friend Guy Carbonneau.
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