Most people are aware of what Twitter is and the impact it has on our culture. It has affected the way we view NFL games, watch our favorite show, and even find out about breaking news, even before the traditional media gets the news. The reason is that the people control the flow of information and can send from just about anywhere. Do you remember how you heard about Michaels Jacksons death? Many Millions heard it first on Twitter before any broadcast had it on television. The traffic was so great, it took down the Twitter Service.
Athletes have also taken to the medium and as fans it makes it really engaging to be able to talk to your favorite player and interact with them on a regular basis. If you are reading this and are among the ones that have had this type of interaction, then you know of what I speak of. If you are new to Twitter but really don’t know where to start, or who to follow in Jets land, read on to get my little primer on the subject.
There are currently 491 players online with the bulk making up active players. The others comprise of retired, free agents, coaches, and hall of famers. The New York Jets have 14 players online that are currently on the roster. 15 if you count the owner Woody Johnson, although I doubt he creates his own tweets.
The degrees of interaction amongst this list vary so in my own mind, I would create the following classifications:
Very Active: (Posts Multiple Times a Day)
The King of Jets Tweets. Kerry was the one of the first athletes on Twitter and is very active online. He will try to reply to every tweet he receives but is starting to get diffucult as his popularity blew up and he went over 300k followers.
Kerry is probably your best bet if you are looking to interact with a Jets player and get an answer back. (Click to read all the Rhodes Twitter Coverage from this past season.)
David is another active tweeter, but I’ll be honest, I mostly ignore his tweets. They are mostly conversational with what seems are his friends. He uses twitter to keep in touch and send bulk messages to his followers. He’s always tweeting people to call him as he’s either losing his phone, or changing it often. (I believe that occurred again today).
David learned the hard way NOT to tweet what is on his mind after games. It got the WR into a ton of trouble in the 2009 season. He also had his account hacked. (See the Twitter Stories on David Clowney from our Site)
Jason is very active and posts just about everything. It seems that the filter from his brain to his mouth is broken, and he’ll say anything. Some of his tweets would be classified as R.
Active (Multiple Times a Week)
Nick is a fun person to follow. He has a great sense of humor and again is a fan favorite on twitter just like he is on the field. He posts a lot of contests and some of the most comical tweets are with fellow Jets Players. He tends to go back and forth with Jay Feely and Dustin Keller.
Darrelle is a great one to follow. He tends to greet everyone in the morning and wish a good night almost every day. He also posts some motivational tweets, or offers his opinions on some large topics. Darrelle will also reply to fans but it isn’t guaranteed.
Jay is probably the most interesting to follow. He has made it known that he has political aspirations on the conservative side, and he is very opinionated individual. If someone disagrees with him, he tries to clarify what he means, because I can tell people like to put words in his mouth, but Jay handles it with class. He also has great respect for our military (as everyone should, but sadly doesn’t) and he tweets and retweets a lot of our heros tweets or pictures.
Dustin is your typical athlete who loves to eat. Every other tweet is about food, or pictures of his food. I just learned this week that he owns multiple restaurants and he tweets about them often.
Somewhat Active (Posts a Couple Times a Month)
James used to be active during this years camp, but then got quiet during the season, but just started getting active again. He tweets about random things.
Damien is hardly online, but will post short thoughts. One of his last tweets was about congratulating the Saints on their Super Bowl victory. I have tweeted Damien a question, but did not get a reply.
It seems that when Mark tweets, it is being down by a PR firm. It is right to the point and he is usually promoting an event. When it finally seemed like it was Mark was this past week during the Super Bowl when he was tweeting his activity during Radio row, or from the beach tag football games. Mark will NEVER reply to you, but don’t let that stop you from tweeting him.
Braylon is inconsistent, kind of like how he catches footballs. Sometimes he’s very engaged and then at other times it’s like he drops the ball. Ok, cheap shot, but you know I had to take it!
Jim is fairly new to twitter. I really only found him a week ago so by looking at his stream, it seems that he is also a monthly poster. Since he joined after the regular season, he really didn’t talk football.
Missing In Action
Bart rarely tweets, in fact his last post was August 14th. Enough said. If you go to his account, it’s a good bet you’ll hear crickets.
Brick WAS an active tweeter early in the season, but then it appears that it got real old, FAST for the offensive lineman.
Woody has posted a total of 19 times, all about the new stadium. It clearly is his assistant or the PR department that controls this account. It’s a good bed that Woody doesn’t even know the password to the account.
Never Really Got It
Calvin Pace (1 and done)
Calvin signed up in January of 2009 and said, ok, NOW WHAT? Enough said.
Now there are many ways you can follow the players. Regardless if you use the Twitter web site, a mobile app or a desktop app, you follow any athlete at any time (unless they block you). This typically will happen if you are stalker or just verbally abuse the player. I know Revis doesn’t like the negative people tweeting him. He basically will ignore you if you rain on his parade.
Another method to follow players is using the somewhat recent new feature called “Lists”. Twitter users can create a list name and add people to them and other can than subscribe to those lists. I have seen numerous “Jets Players Lists”, but if you want to follow the list created by Jets Twit, here is a listing:
Lists on @jetstwit (The Official Account of this Blog Jets Twit)
- http://twitter.com/jetstwit/jetsplayers-current
- http://twitter.com/jetstwit/jetsplayers-ex
- http://twitter.com/jetstwit/jetsplayers-retired
- http://twitter.com/jetstwit/jetsagents
Lists on @e_man (My Personal Twitter Account for Erik Manassy)
- http://twitter.com/e_man/jetsfans (Currently the largest list of Jets fans on Twitter. Over 400!)
- http://twitter.com/e_man/jetsblogs
- http://twitter.com/e_man/jetsbeatwriters
- http://twitter.com/e_man/jetsplayers
- http://twitter.com/e_man/sports-agents
Here are some other Notable Lists from other users you may want to Follow:
- http://twitter.com/NFLplayersfans/nfl-players
- http://twitter.com/Pro_Athletes/nfl-teams (The Official accounts of each Pro Team)
- http://twitter.com/thejetsblog/jets-fan-project-list (Shout out to our bud Brian Bassett for theJetsblog.com)
If know of some great lists you think are worth following for our readers, please POST THEM in our comments of this post! Thanks!
When I follow someones list, I’ll manually follow each user personally if I find them interesting. The list is a great feature because you can now find a “Tribe” of users that like a certain topic fairly easy. Before lists, you would have to search for key words and find people one at a time. This process was very labor intensive.
Hopefully you found this post helpful and if you did, please let me know in the comments OR you can contact me using my form.
