Earlier, Mashable put out a blog post which touted the NBA as the first “in pro sports” to have Twitter handles on jerseys. That’s a mistake. What Mashable’s Sam Laird should have blogged was that the NBA was the first professional sports league to offer t-shirts or jerseys for sale with the individual players Twitter handles on them.
As you can see.
Later in the blog post, Laird writes a paragraph that contradicts his post:
While the NBA is the first league to officially make player Twitter T-shirts, it’s not the first to have a version of the idea. The sports-meets-social site TweetStarGame has an online store selling Twitter-handle shirts of players from a number of sports. Professional soccer and lacrosse teams have also replaced players’ names with their handles on official game uniforms.
It looks like Laird added that paragraph just after the initial post was written, then uploaded the new version of it.
Bottom line, the NBA isn’t exactly the first, but regardless of who is, the development is a major step in the expansion of social media into popular culture.
Zennie Abraham | Zennie Abraham or “Zennie62” is the founder of Zennie62Media which consists of zennie62blog.com and a multimedia blog news aggregator and video network, and 78-blog network, with social media and content development services and consulting. Zennie is a pioneer video blogger, YouTube Partner, social media practitioner, game developer, and pundit. Note: news aggregator content does not reflect the personal views of Mr. Abraham.