Digital Connections: Football

Back in the 70's and even early eighties, I remember footballers acting like real people. You'd bump into them on the street, some even on public transport - and quite often they would say hello and chat to fans and locals. In the late 70's I met Peter Withe at a bus stop, a modern footballer probably doesn't know where his nearest bus stop is.

The flood of money into the game changed a lot, and with it the vast majority of footballers heads vanished up their own arses. Footballers have disappeared from everyday life, only seen behind tinted windows, electric gates and posturing in VIP areas of nightclubs.

Social media has changed that, a handful of players are using Twitter very well and are using it to connect with fans - albeit on their own terms. But its not all about Rio Ferdinand or Robbie Savage. Take this example from Newcastle United right back Danny Simpson, he will have made this girl's week - and with one tweet he's put a spring in her step and sold a nufc season ticket to boot!

A belated Happy New Year everyone!

Once or twice a month, I send out a Digital Connections newsletter to a few subscribers. As a quick test I've posted the latest version as a blog post. Unsure whether I'll keep on doing this - but if you'd like it in your inbox then it would be great if you subscribed. The box should be somewhere on your right ---->

Digital Connections Newsletter #2

Apparently the brief for Rio's 2016 Olympic logo was to "Transmit Olympic values and attributes, to reflect the local culture, to project the city and country's image, to assure universal understanding as well as be current until the actual Games, along with many other considerations." In which case why should we be surprised that it's another wishy washy Olympic logo? More here

An intriguing football supporter infographic map of London, pulled together by a graphic designer using data from footballderbies.com and a bit of guesswork. It first did the rounds on Twitter but was picked up by Wired Magazine.

I love this concept -> Nike's designers are now designing kit to make American Footballers look faster. The colorways are meant to bring your eyes to the fastest moving parts of the player's bodies -- the hands, and in particular the shins, which move twice as fast as the thighs do while running.I wonder how long this will take to cross over to mainstreams sports and teams?

This visualization did the rounds a couple of weeks ago - but its still awesome. Using data from 10million people (2% of Facebook users) of the connections between friends on Facebook, Paul Butler an (amazingly talented) intern at Facebook has created a remarkable map of the world tracking conversations.

Unless you've been hiding under a rock, you wont fail to have heard the story about Ryan Babel the Liverpool footballer who posted a picture of referee in a Manchester United Shirt. Plenty has been written but for me this "Twitter Ye Not" article by the BBC's John Sinnott was the pick of the bunch. And by the way Ryan Babel's photoshop skills aren't too shabby either!!

I'm really liking Google Realtime at the moment. It's a good tool to monitor breaking stories on Twitter. I've used it this week to keep an eye on the Spurs v West Ham "Olympic Stadium" conversations. Interesting to see when the story broke & see how conversation has changed over the days.

If the England Football Team were a car, they would be a ...
Vauxhall follow up their sponsorship of England with similar but smaller deals with the Welsh and Northern Irish football associations. Sports Pro article here

An attempt by Nike to get across Nike's CSR message - Not quite sure whether I believe any of it - but its a really nice example of an HTML 5 microsite. www.nikebetterworld.com

Finally, an interesting article in the Guardian covering the Office of Fair Trading's investigation into Celebrities endorsing products on Twitter. One to keep an eye on as there will obviously be an impact on the sponsorship industry.