ESPN Limits Tweeting To “Serving ESPN?”
1-liner, ESPN, Twitter August 4th. 2009, 6:07pmESPN and Tweeting: You knew it was coming – “ESPN memo prohibiting tweeting info unless it serves ESPN. Kinda figured this was coming. Not sure what this means but …” If anyone has the memo, we’d love to read it (thebiglead@gmail.com). Anonymity assured. Imagine this will be a big discussion tomorrow, seeing as how prolific (and informative and funny) some tweeters are. There probably will be some outrage from frequent tweeters like Simmons, Jemele Hill, Amy Nelson, and the legions of ESPNites who use it as a way to connect with fans. [Ric Bucher, Bomani Jones]
33 Responses to “ESPN Limits Tweeting To “Serving ESPN?””
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
August 4th, 2009 at 6:18 PM
Does this affect PTI you think? Reali?
August 4th, 2009 at 6:24 PM
and SPORTSNATION. i would love to hang out with michelle beadle.
August 4th, 2009 at 6:24 PM
Kinda weird that ESPN will want to kill an organic way for fans to connect with the writers, which would drive those fans to ESPN material. oh well, nobody ever said ESPN wasn’t ham-handed in its policies.
August 4th, 2009 at 6:26 PM
a lot of people bitch about the news quoting tweets..espn included.
August 4th, 2009 at 6:32 PM
@TexansFan: and ESPN is going to stop the athletes/celebrities from tweeting? because those are the twitter quotes people care about.
August 4th, 2009 at 6:32 PM
Ocho Cinco wins.
August 4th, 2009 at 6:35 PM
just another reason to rag on espn.
August 4th, 2009 at 6:43 PM
Twitter sucks, but ESPN is being rather draconian (translation: stupid) by enacting this policy.
August 4th, 2009 at 6:45 PM
Now each twit will be 132 chars instead of 140, so the writers can append “ESPNis#1″ to meet the “serves ESPN” clause. Yeah, its much better to pull an asshole move like this, ESPN, than to embrace it and setup a collective Twatter portal on your site, where the masses can find all your writers’ & athletes’ twittwats. For fux sake, dont do anything that makes sense.
August 4th, 2009 at 6:48 PM
oh okay i misunderstood the post. i thought espn wasnt going to report tweets from athletes. they are instead fucking their own employees
August 4th, 2009 at 6:49 PM
and thats fucking bullshit. who the fuck is any company to tell an employee what they can do on social network sites? its not the fucking US marine corps
August 4th, 2009 at 7:11 PM
I suppose it really depends on how broad the definition of “serving ESPN” is. Reali and PTI use it to market their shows. Simmons is another matter.
August 4th, 2009 at 7:19 PM
Hmmm… so let’s assume that at one point, ESPN could prevent Simmons and other writers/personalities from twittering based on a contractual arrangement, likely some sort of exclusive right to content clause. However, although I doubt anyone will fight ESPN on this, except Simmons, it seems to me as though ESPN is estopped (waived the right by its previous passivity) from preventing Simmons from twittering what he wants. They’ve known Simmons has been on twitter since day one and did nothing. Whether based on a contractual claim, an employment law claim, or something else entirely, ESPN did not intervene until now.
Based on that ground, I don’t think ESPN can reprimand him for twittering anything inappropriate (in ESPN’s eyes). I’m sure they could fire him for plenty of other reasons, but we know that ESPN doesn’t want to do that (see Yahoo Sports). I expect Simmons probably knows this, and I enjoy the chaos that may come.
I’m probably missing something. Any JD’s care to comment?
/Still a law student for one more year
August 4th, 2009 at 7:22 PM
I was gonna say Simmons will probably make a stink, and get an exception, and then this whole stupid policy will fall completely apart.
But I’m not a smarty like theTed.
/seriously, thanks for the info, Ted.
August 4th, 2009 at 7:24 PM
I doubt this will impact ESPN tweeters like Simmons at all. The wording of Bucher’s tweet seems to indicate that they don’t want their reporters posting news items on Twitter. His clarification tweet just posted seems to confirm that reading. That seems perfectly reasonable to me. Bucher is paid to gather news for ESPN, not Twitter.
August 4th, 2009 at 7:28 PM
Damn, I hope Simmons still does his #yearbookquote that he copied from someone else.
August 4th, 2009 at 7:32 PM
Now that I think about it, Simmons is probably exempt altogether. They let him maintain that blog, and his public(ish) spat with them last year probably strenghtened his position on all of these kinds of things.
August 4th, 2009 at 7:33 PM
It’s probably not that hard to get around this. Tweet what you want, and then just post an ESPN link after it.
August 4th, 2009 at 7:35 PM
Twitter wasn’t around when Simmons signed his last contract. I don’t think this has anything to do with Simmons. Like Partager said, ESPN doesn’t want their reporters tweeting about a potential trade or something and the unwashed masses taking that as actual news.
August 4th, 2009 at 7:43 PM
Tweet my balls.
August 4th, 2009 at 7:44 PM
I agree with Ruckmaker and KC, I think they just want a link to the espn story if you’re posting news. But I do kind of wonder if this has anything to do with the Shlereth(sp?) Ochocinco spat.
August 4th, 2009 at 7:51 PM
Yes.
And they probably just don’t want unfounded ramblings. You know, the thinking out loud variety. Which to be honest, are the only tw33ts I care about. The stuff linking stories are not really useful. All of us are going to visit tWWL once a day.
August 4th, 2009 at 7:52 PM
so i guess this will make ESPN employees tweets as unimportant as the rest of the normal worlds. big deal. they want people to go to them for their sports news not a social networking site that they dont make any money off of. that is just good business sense.
August 4th, 2009 at 7:57 PM
It can’t be that hard for ESPN to develop a twitter knockoff can it? I’m not a savvy tech guy, but twitter looks awfully simple.
August 4th, 2009 at 7:58 PM
Simmons is either posting links for his stuff on the dotcom or none relevant “ooo look at this” stuff. This is directed at Bucher,etal.
August 4th, 2009 at 8:02 PM
Simmons posts some funny stuff on his account. Not very often does it relate to his .com adventures.
August 4th, 2009 at 8:04 PM
O/T
Just figured out my picture in picture on the TV after… 2 years. Can I get opinions on broadcast teams? Do I want to watch the Mets broadcasters or the Cardinals broadcasters for this Cards game?
Not sure which team is better.
August 4th, 2009 at 8:05 PM
Speak for yourself there cha cha.
I tend to disagree with some of what you say. As someone on here said a few days ago, Facebook is a social networking site, but twitter is a marketing engine. How many of us follow Reali or PTI? I bet it’s a healthy number. They use that medium to connect with their viewers, and drive viewership. I also think that ESPN isn’t sa dumb as we’d all like to imagine. They’re simply limiting what their employees say in an official capacity. Happens at pretty much every company everywhere. The company I work for uses twitter, but the official PR and marketing people are certainly limited as to what they say there. ESPN will let their people use it, but they’re going to regulate how they use it.
August 4th, 2009 at 8:06 PM
Cards. Hands down.
August 4th, 2009 at 8:17 PM
I’m gonna go out on a limb and say they’re GT associated?
August 4th, 2009 at 8:27 PM
I don’t know if this is really the way to look at it just because they are only trying to limit their employees from giving up info that could first be shown on an ESPN entity. I don’t know what their policies are on their people going on other radio/tv or non ESPN entities in general, though.
August 4th, 2009 at 8:41 PM
Nah, it’s just that everything that has to do with the Mets is pond scum.
August 5th, 2009 at 1:31 AM
Some great points made here by Ruckmaker, Joboo, theTed, and Mrejr/Brock.
+1 each
Tony Bruno was discussing this late last night on his usually lame sports radio show. He read the memo on the onerous policy by ESPN and essentially in so many words, for any employee of ESPN, employees on air can forget about the use of ANY social networking sites on SPORTS content whilst in the employment of ESPN UNLESS it it is approved first by ESPN. This includes even whilst not at work due to the public persona of its employees on air. More than likely the memo extends it to the various employees off-air as well, but they have less of an argument and ability to enforce those restrictions.
And oh the ways to get around this policy by using screen names and shills and so on …
New legal ground to be broken here regarding employee rights and the like, but this is real early in this game.