After reading the article ‘How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live‘ I immediately thought about the changes I have seen in sports and its coverage in the media. Almost every show on ESPN will allow you to either choose a topic of discussion via twitter, or get your comments on their ticker. Each analyst is constantly advertising their own twitter account to gain as much followers as possible. I first got on twitter to follow Adam Schefter, and Chris Mortensen in order to get what John Battelle described as “super fresh” web. I had no intentions of becoming an avid tweeter, but rather feel like I was an NFL insider.

The other thought that jumped out at me after reading the article was the new dangers that twitter brings to people with a lot to lose. I can’t think of another tool that allows you to post something that is viewable to anybody on the internet with relative ease (maybe not, I am pretty clueless about privacy settings). There have been a variety of instances in which a popular athlete or celebrity has taken a huge PR hit due to questionable tweeting. The fact that some NCAA coaches have banned their teams from using twitter indicates just how much of an impact a tweet can have, both on the individual and everything they are associated with. This can bring in a whole new discussion about whether or not the rule is a violation of freedom of speech for the players; however that is a topic for another day. I do believe that twitter has and will change the way we live, but as Steven Johnson mentions in his article “it’s entirely possible that three or four years from now, we’ll have moved on to some Twitter successor”.