A couple of weeks ago, Liverpool player Ryan Babel hit the headlines for complaining that he had been left out of the squad for his team's match against Stoke City on social networking site Twitter. "The Boss left me out," Babel told his Twitter feed, "No explanation." At the start of the season, Sunderland striker Darren Bent also complained on the social networking site about his previous club Tottenham Hotspur. The pair of them were reprimanded for their use of Twitter. Last week, the Manchester Evening News went on to claim that Manchester City and Manchester United had placed a ban on social media, which since has been denied.
On a personal level as a Liverpool FC fan, I believe that it was wrong for Ryan Babel to publicly criticise the club and manager for being left out the squad. The reason for this is that firstly, I believe that he did not do himself any favours by posting his opinions on Twitter. Secondly, it was wrong for him to openly be disrespectful to his employers in the public eye, considering that they are the ones who pay his wages.
However, on the grander scale of it all, websites such as Twitter give millions of sports fans the chance to debate, discuss and interact with their sporting idols every day. If sports clubs were to ban players from using social media, it would put up a brick wall between the two. Social Media is a gateway for sports clubs and professionals to better engage with their supporters, wherever they may be.
A better way to encourage the use of social media such as Twitter, would be to draw up a series strict guidelines, so for example, players cannot talk about internal matters or team selection like Ryan Babel did for instance. As a result, sporting professionals would be able to communicate with their supporters, whilst minimising the risk of sensitive information being leaked.
Since I joined Twitter I have enjoyed following many of my favourite sports men and women. It enables you to understand them better and gives you an insight on what they do in their spare time. It's such a great way for famous people to communicate with their fans and I don't think any football club should ban their players from using Twitter.
ReplyDeleteI do agree that strict guidelines should be put in place concerning what players can and can't micro-blog about. Using twitter to criticise and complain about managers, coaches is extremely risky as they determine whether or not to put players in the game (in the cases of coaches) and whether or not contract's may be renewed (in the case of managers).
ReplyDeleteHowever, can you really place restrictions on players tweets or blogs? I personally don't believe you can. If a person has the freedom to blog/microblog, there is a possibility that they may cross a line in terms of content. So I do understand the initial plan to ban social media use altogether. It would honestly control the spread of any undesirable information.
In my opinion, this is the same situation that many businesses face. Many businesses have prevented their employees from blogging/micro-blogging about anything pertaining to the organisation. This is usually done to protect the organisation. Because sometimes it is the simplest comment that can cause the biggest problems. You may be surprised what is considered to be libel, which would only cause legal problems for the organisation.
So although, a big financial organisation and a sports team may not be very similar, each has just as much to lose in this situation.