J.R. Smith No Longer Twatting

J.R. Smith's Twitter page has landed him in some trouble.

Has everyone seen the video of Steven Colbert on the today show?  Twatted, hilarious.

Anyways, that video is just a precursor into what this post is all about. In yesterday’s news there were two stories that had negative implications to that of the social media giant, Twitter.

While I do find stories about social media outlets somewhat interesting, I normally wouldn’t be inclined to write something about it, however, in this particular sector of life, the NBA has sort of been in the forefront.

First there was Ric Bucher reporting (via Twitter of course) that ESPN is now putting a limit on the type of content that their analysts put on their Twitter pages. What this all means, I’m not exactly sure. What I do know is that as an NBA fan, reading professional basketball analysts’ live tweets during games really enhanced my viewing of said game. This would be something I would miss, assuming ESPN takes away these rights.  

Now, I’m not sure if these new ESPN restrictions will limit that type of activity. If the end goal for ESPN is to increase popularity amongst their writers, some off hand 140 character tweets would do just the trick in my opinion – obviously though I’m not calling the shots for them.

The other noteworthy story from yesterday was the J.R. Smith loosely termed Twitter “scandal”. To paraphrase the story, apparently Smith was under some scrutiny for tweets which had some gang related innuendos within them. This inevitably led Smith to shut his page down (which was a good move by him).

Now, where is this all going? This is not the first time that Twitter has been out in front of the NBA headlines for the wrong reasons. Of course who can forget Charlie Villanueva sending a tweet during halftime of one of his games earlier this season.

Originally I was all for the fact of NBA being on such social media outlets as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace etc. It’s an amazing way for players to connect directly with fans, and to allow fans to sort of take a peek into a life that for generations prior has been closed off.

I’m all for using these outlets to do just that. But when is this vehicle going to be restricted, if not taken away all together for professional athletes? At the very least, are we on the path where the social media entities for athletes are regulated by a PR staff? I believe that we are.

Either way, it has been interesting to see the growth/changes of these outlets and how quickly it has all happened. However, it is only a matter of time until these institutions become regulated so that athletes aren’t paying a price, at least in the public’s eye, for something that up to till this past year would normally not be read.

What do you think?