08.28
MLB, the Major League Baseball communicated yesterday the launch of their new @MLB blog “because sometimes 140 characters is just not enough. This blog will be used frequently to support our main @MLB account on Twitter.”
MLB, which counts at the time I write 353,291 followers on Twitter, is one of the most active Sport Organisations in the field of online technology and social media.
Very unusual choice, the @MLB blog, but only apparently. At first we could ask ourselves why would MLB somehow go “against the nature” of Twitter, which by definition is “a real-time short messaging service that works over multiple networks and devices”.
If we “extend” it into a blog then it is not Twitter anymore. Why not having just a blog then? Or why not combining Twitter and Facebook where the latter allows longer text and display images in a more attractive way?
I think that MLB has done the right strategic choice here.
They probably thought:
- We have a good fan base on Twitter
- Our Facebook page hasn’t got a particularly big audience ( 37,000 fans, as opposed to NHL with 130,000, NFL with 155,000 and NBA 1,415,000 fans), which wouldn’t give us enough visibility even if we wanted to integrate our message through Twitter and Facebook together.
- Building an audience from scratch on a separate blog (as an official MLB “voice” besides all the great individual blogs on MLBlogs) would take time and probably disperse energy and fans.
And here is the only apparently unusual choice of a “Twitter extension” blog.
I agree with this strategy as it is the smartest way to leverage MLB’s at the moment biggest social network, the 353,291 followers on Twitter, and integrate the platform with an “appendix”, but more than anything else it shows how a powerful and smart strategy makes the difference and technology alone is useless.
I like also the choice of MLB to explore new paths and solutions, even going against the ones that will shout out at the “violation” of Twitter’s nature (oh please…).
Didn’t we say it already a few weeks ago? The limit of Online Technology is creativity and personality.
Alessandro De Zanche
I think it’s great too…the key to this will be the way they write stuff. The header (and Twitter post) should be informative and attractive enough for the fan to make the click-through…not to mention under 140 characters…if this is achieved, will make a lot of sense.
-RBT