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To Tweet or Not to Tweet

Postby Roland

http://www.snookerbacker.com/2011/03/14 ... -to-tweet/

That is the question…..

When the website Twitter and the concept of ‘Tweeting’ first came to prominence I, like most people that consider themselves rightly or in my own case wrongly to be intelligent thought, what a self-indulgent cow pat of a pastime that is.

This is much like I felt and still to an extent do feel about the other monster that is Facebook. I do not want to waste my time liking people for ‘eating a piece of toast’ or ‘feeling fantastic today, lost two pounds’ nor do I want to be friends with people that I detested at school and wouldn’t acknowledge in the street if I hadn’t spoken to anyone for a month. My contempt for people that live their lives on there knows no bounds.

But this week, even the grumpiest of snooker fan must have looked to the skies and thanked the greatest myth known to humanity for the tweets coming to us directly from Sheffield from Matt at ProSnookerBlog and the main man Roland at Snooker Island. Both snooker addicts that brought the tension being felt by the players to life and to our remote locations.

The solitary experience of sitting there watching the scoreboard for a week can have some very worrying side effects which range from the serious such as resorting to Class A drugs, through the milder such as becoming immobile and self-soiling to the less harmful such as temporarily forgetting your name and where you are. It’s a humdrum existence and the F5 key seems at times to be your only friend. But this week, those that tweeted or simply observed and ‘twitched’ had another outlet that meant they (we) did not become completely socially dysfunctional drooling imbeciles.

So does this mean Twitter is the future in such circumstances? Well, for all the good it’s done this week I don’t think there is a snooker fan in the land that would say yes. If the experience of this week has confirmed anything for the fifteen millionth time it is that live streaming of qualifiers is now essential in taking snooker to the next level.

We all know that there are contractual issues to sort out, but how about this for a suggestion, let’s bring them out in the open and name and shame those who for whatever reason are standing in the way of progress. Let’s name the culprits and let them explain why they are acting in this way, why they won’t let King Bazza get his hands on the streaming rights when they are doing absolutely nothing with them. Come on, who is it that is depriving snooker fans of their right to enjoy the sport they love because they are more interested in their own bank balance? Come on here and give your side of the story, I dare you.

Viva La Revolution!

But while we wait for this to be sorted out we have Twitter, it’s a consolation yes, but in this day and age it is absolutely ludicrous that a sport with the intention of going global is so reliant on unpaid foot soldiers to do it’s reporting. I don’t blame the current regime at World Snooker for this as they have obviously inherited a right royal mess from the hapless Sir Rodney Effing’s chairmanship, but Bazza is an astute businessman, surely sorting this out is not beyond his seemingly Midas like touch.

So aside from the streaming argument is Twitter good for the sport? Well I would argue that it is. It gives fans access to players, officials and fellow enthusiasts and that can only be a good thing. Slowly but surely the penny is beginning to drop with the players. Mike Dunn, Mark Selby and Matthew Stevens have been on there for a long time, recent converts to Tweetsville include Jack Lisowski, Mark King and the World Champion Neil Robertson. Let’s hope we see some more joining up, though there is an obvious risk of internet meltdown if Smurf decides to sign up given that he has an opinion on absolutely everything.

Commentators Dave Hendon and Neal Foulds are prolific tweeters as are referees Michaela Tabb and Big Jan Verhaas. Bloggers such as Matt, Dave, myself and our friends over in Spain use it to flag up new posts and to just generally have a chat about snooker related issues or Carry On Films.

But if I ever use it to say ‘I’m just eating a piece of toast’. Kill me now.

Re: To Tweet or Not to Tweet

Postby GJ

matt is a legend :bowdown:

he would be a great contributor for this site <cool>

sonny

:bowdown:

Re: To Tweet or Not to Tweet

Postby randam05

Those tweets were great! Followed on jades twitter account most of the weekend and really got a feel for the match and we ended up quite tense ourselves without even watching it. Got a real feel for how much it meant and the drama going on! thanks for doing that! :)

Re: To Tweet or Not to Tweet

Postby Wildey

shhhhhhhhhhh

dont tell matt but i was only following Sonny :hide:

but you did get a better understanding of how gettable the frame was from a chance.

Re: To Tweet or Not to Tweet

Postby GJ

i only followed matt not sonny because matt was doing it all week

Re: To Tweet or Not to Tweet

Postby Wildey

GJ wrote:i only followed matt not sonny because matt was doing it all week

your banned :redneck:

Re: To Tweet or Not to Tweet

Postby Roland

I enjoyed it and hope the same scenario happens next year. The only reason it's required is because there was no live streaming and Sheffield is an hour from York so it'll probably be a one off but I enjoyed it. Got a feel for it from Thursday night with all the 10-9's and following @ProSnookerBlog to get an idea of how good the chances were and what was going on. I said at the time it was the best night of watching live scoring I've ever had. It made me want to go and also I knew using Twitter had to be done to help all those following live scores without knowing what's really happening, also Matt was struggling to follow 4 or 6 matches simultaneously so I helped him out a bit.

As a spectacle I hope one day the final qualifying round will be broadcast somewhere be it streaming or even television. I know that kind of defeats the object because they're playing to get to the holy venue and it's not actually at a "venue" but it's a big date on the snooker calendar.

Matt is a really top guy, down to earth and very bright and knows his snooker. We're on the same wavelength so we hit it off straight away. He told me having been there all week that it was noticable how the standard improved as the rounds progressed. Throughout the weekend Tony Drago was phoning him up for the latest scores and a lot of the players wanted to talk to him about his ranking list (seen in Hot Topics on this forum index page) and said they don't bother with the "Offical" rankings on the World Snooker site and only follow his. No one can understand why World Snooker doesn't use that way of presenting the rankings because that's the one they are all playing to.

Re: To Tweet or Not to Tweet

Postby Bourne

Matt is a really top guy, down to earth and very bright and knows his snooker. We're on the same wavelength

:redneck:

Re: To Tweet or Not to Tweet

Postby Roland

full stop we're on the same wavelength so....

Re: To Tweet or Not to Tweet

Postby Wildey

Sonny wrote:I enjoyed it and hope the same scenario happens next year. The only reason it's required is because there was no live streaming and Sheffield is an hour from York so it'll probably be a one off but I enjoyed it. Got a feel for it from Thursday night with all the 10-9's and following @ProSnookerBlog to get an idea of how good the chances were and what was going on. I said at the time it was the best night of watching live scoring I've ever had. It made me want to go and also I knew using Twitter had to be done to help all those following live scores without knowing what's really happening, also Matt was struggling to follow 4 or 6 matches simultaneously so I helped him out a bit.

As a spectacle I hope one day the final qualifying round will be broadcast somewhere be it streaming or even television. I know that kind of defeats the object because they're playing to get to the holy venue and it's not actually at a "venue" but it's a big date on the snooker calendar.

Matt is a really top guy, down to earth and very bright and knows his snooker. We're on the same wavelength so we hit it off straight away. He told me having been there all week that it was noticable how the standard improved as the rounds progressed. Throughout the weekend Tony Drago was phoning him up for the latest scores and a lot of the players wanted to talk to him about his ranking list (seen in Hot Topics on this forum index page) and said they don't bother with the "Offical" rankings on the World Snooker site and only follow his. No one can understand why World Snooker doesn't use that way of presenting the rankings because that's the one they are all playing to.

The thinking Behind World Snooker Rankings is when the corisponding tournament is played the Points droping off but because theres so much more tournaments now there was not corisponding events but in 2012/2013 season when PTC 1 is played Points for 2010/2011 PTC 1 will be dropped.

Matt on the other Hand dropping All points prior to a cut off so it gives a clearer picture what players needs to do.

if they changed seedings from tournament to tournament then the WSA way is the correct way BUT They Not Doing that.

We could have a scenario in the World Championship Where Stephen Hendry (seeded) World No 20 plays Stuart Bingham (Qualifier) World No 12.

Re: To Tweet or Not to Tweet

Postby Roland

I didn't understand that Wild but I understand the rankings and Matt's is the only list. As soon as the new came through about rolling rankings I thought the list would be the one Matt has done because it's the first thing I thought of. Right, what's the current score on the points list for the next cut off?

Re: To Tweet or Not to Tweet

Postby Wildey

Sonny wrote:I didn't understand that Wild but I understand the rankings and Matt's is the only list. As soon as the new came through about rolling rankings I thought the list would be the one Matt has done because it's the first thing I thought of. Right, what's the current score on the points list for the next cut off?

the Seeding List is only updated 3 times during the Season which what Matt is doing BUT the World Rankings this season would have been updated 20 times after each of the tournament played.

it seems pointless thing to do if the Seedings doesn't change TBH.

Re: To Tweet or Not to Tweet

Postby Matt_2745

Thanks everyone, I've not got around to signing up until now and haven't really got the time at the moment to contribute properly over here but was having a read and wanted to register to say ta to everyone who followed. It was a great week and good to meet all sorts of people, from players to fans to Mr Snooker Island and his clunking coffee flasks himself! Good to meet you too, I'm not worthy of that praise though! Always good to chat to someone who clearly knows their stuff though.

Hopefully someone at World Snooker will have noticed what we were trying to do and they will either copy us next year or pay for our petrol, it cost me the best part of £200 and I'm sure that Sonny's would have been similar had he attended all the days.

Worth every penny though, roll on the Crucible.

Re: To Tweet or Not to Tweet

Postby Wildey

Matt_2745 wrote:Thanks everyone, I've not got around to signing up until now and haven't really got the time at the moment to contribute properly over here but was having a read and wanted to register to say ta to everyone who followed. It was a great week and good to meet all sorts of people, from players to fans to Mr Snooker Island and his clunking coffee flasks himself! Good to meet you too, I'm not worthy of that praise though! Always good to chat to someone who clearly knows their stuff though.

Hopefully someone at World Snooker will have noticed what we were trying to do and they will either copy us next year or pay for our petrol, it cost me the best part of £200 and I'm sure that Sonny's would have been similar had he attended all the days.

Worth every penny though, roll on the Crucible.

Great to have you on board here at last <ok>

im not a tweeter but during that final round just watching Live scoring was Frustrating so having tweets was handy..

i did not follow you i followed sonny (sat and sunday) but next time i will be looking out for you or someone tweeting us atmosphere of what its like there.

Re: To Tweet or Not to Tweet

Postby Matt_2745

No worries, to be honest I can imagine that the amount of tweeting I was doing will have driven some people made, think it was 3,000 during the week. That said, the reaction was overwhelmingly positive, guess that reflects how little information does come out of the event from the official channels.

Re: To Tweet or Not to Tweet

Postby Roland

Glad you've joined up Matt. Don't worry about proliferation of posts, just stop by when you have time or something you want to say or let us know about :santa:

Re: To Tweet or Not to Tweet

Postby Roland

By the way Bourne is @Phil90210 and rulesy is GJ as I realised afterwards so that tweet about Stevens retiring was from a Stevens fan going through the mill :redneck:

Re: To Tweet or Not to Tweet

Postby randam05

Matt_2745 wrote:No worries, to be honest I can imagine that the amount of tweeting I was doing will have driven some people made, think it was 3,000 during the week. That said, the reaction was overwhelmingly positive, guess that reflects how little information does come out of the event from the official channels.


Good to see you on here! was following you all week, via my sisters twitter, which is jadelovesnooker..perhaps i should set one up <ok>

Well done.

Re: To Tweet or Not to Tweet

Postby Roland

Snooker players are starting to catch on to twitter it seems. There's been a good bit of banter today between Jack Lisowski and Michael Holt. I think Jack is going to end up being some sort of people's champion in the vein of Paul Hunter, he seems like a really likeable character.