Leeds Blog 12 Players and fans on twitter
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Players and fans on twitter
Players and fans on Twitter
Like a huge percentage of fans, I am on twitter and have been for over a year. I was dead against it at first, like I was with Facebook when that first came out, but as things adapts and modernise, I decided I had to get with the times!
Twitter is great for finding out news straight from the horses mouth, many journalists and people connected to football are on there that are to be trusted, but like most things in life there are many people on there that you can't trust. An example of this is the so called "ITK" or "In The Know" people that have nothing better to do than to make things up to get a reaction. A massive example of this is someone from Leicester that insists he is "ITK" when he is clearly a bored teenager, Indi Kalia!
Leeds United have a massive fan base and there are lots of twitter pages that are of use, some funny, some serious, others that are friendly for all and then you have the "of no use" category! I have come across accounts that are clearly only there to either cause trouble, to lie or to stir up an unwelcome exchange with other fans. I still struggle to understand why some accounts retweet an announcement from an official account like @LUFC when surely every Leeds fan must follow them. Sometimes I look at my timeline thinking have I been drinking, or am I seeing Leeds United's tweet a hundred times via retweets!
One thing that has come to light, not just from me, but other fans have noticed this for a while now, players that don't respond to their fans when offered support, praise or general chit chat. Now I am not gullible enough to think that a player with 60,000 followers that gets messages off hundreds of fans a day will or could respond to everyone, but what annoys me is when one tweet from hundreds gets picked out and gets acknowledged due to being a criticism of a player! For example, a player could get 100 tweets in the way of congratulations for their performance in a game that day, they all get lost in the wind, except for one that says that player was terrible today and then gets a reaction from that player! Another example of this is when a rival fan gives a player stick that in turn gets stick back from the player, but fails to interact with his own fans. I am not saying he is in the wrong, I am saying spend a little time acknowledging the fans that pay good money to watch you play and in some case that player may be someone's idol. An example of this was over the weekend when a fan had wrongly identified that a player's agent was trying to get the player a move, a tweet that had incorrect information as the said agent doesn't represent the player. Instead of ignoring the negatives, this player then called the fan a knobhead which I think is uncalled for. Again, instead of going after the negative fans, spend a little time interacting with the ones that acknowledge them for the right reasons. It only takes a quick thank you tweet or even a retweet to make some people happy. I am not saying that every message to them should be blowing smoke up their backsides, they should be able to take the rough with the smooth, but just have that interaction with the fans and not just player on player showing off on twitter when I am sure they all own phones and could be texting each other in private!
This blog may come across as another negative, but with no game on Saturday I needed something to whinge about! As always this is not aimed at everyone, there are some very fan friendly players out there, one in particular doesn't play for the club anymore, but still takes time to interact with fans of the club he still loves - Andy Hughes. Another example of this is Noel Hunt, he does his fair share of interaction. I will leave it to you to either agree/disagree and if you have any personnel experience of this please tell us in the comments below.
Thanks again for reading.
Interacting as always @LeedsEditor
Editor 13
27 January 2014
You do sound a bit Vicor Meldrew-ish but I'll put that down to being bored with no match to attend. I sort of get your point, but my wife moans at me for how long I spend on my phone and I only have 62 followers! I know professional footballers have a lot of spare time but it would be a full time job reading, replying, commenting, blocking and remembering who are genuine fans or not
{Ed013 - I don't bloddy believe it lol, I understand that buddy, I just think they show off replying to each other and ignoring the fans unless its a negative. Some younger fans would love something simple like a retweet off of one of them. Roll on tomorrow night, back to football and something else to whine about ;-)