Who will win the "Twitter Super Bowl"?

Steven Loeb · January 31, 2015 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/3bbd

It's Brady vs. Sherman vs. Gronkowski vs. Wilson vs. Lynch!

When it became clear that this year's Super Bowl was going to come down to the Seahawks versus the Patriots, I had one thought: meh. It's a team I don't care about versus a team I hate (I'm from New York, and I'm a Yankees fan, so I am automatically olbiged to hate any team from New England.)

To be totally honest, I wasn't even sure if I was even going to watch the game this year. Then things went totall crazy!

First came the accusations of the Patriots delfating their footballs, aka. delfate-fate. Then came  the Tom Brady/giant hat press conference. And who could have predicted the amazing Marshawn Lynch and his epic "I'm just here so I don't get fined" staredown. It's been a sideshow in the best way possible.

With all of these incidents having lit up Twitter in recent weeks, you know it's only going to get ramped up during the game.

So today we are  going to play a game called the Twitter Superbowl, where we look at which players are likely to get the most tweets on game day.

Richard Sherman (@RSherman_25) came to national attention in 2013 with his epic, and memorable, rant about San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Michael Crabtree during the 2013 NFC Championship game.

Here that is in case you want to watch it again:

But even before that, Sherman made waves on Twitter with a tweet directed at his upcoming opponent, Patriot quarterback Tom Brady, back in 2012. (Sherman almost immediately deleted the photo, but nothing is ever truly erased from the Internet)

Sherman is a passionate guy, and someone who is unafraid to speak his mind. This is the guy who once told ESPN reporter Skip Bayless, "I'm better at life than you."

That kind of passion also makes him a lightening rod, so look for Sherman to get a lot of coverage on social media.

 

 

Tom  Brady is the man that everyone outside of New England loves to hate. And it's easy to see why. He's handsome, he's a millionaire and he's marries to freakin Gisele Bündchen! He has the life that just about every man wants.

Though he doesn't have an official Twitter account (this fact bothers CEO Dick Costolo, who has specifically said that, out all athletes, Brady is the one he wants on Twitter the most), but that doesn't mean that people won't be talking about him.

Just look at what happened after Tom Brady's ridiculous press conference on deflate-gate, in which he wore a comically and epically oversized hat  and kept talking about "balls," thereby turning everyone watching into a giggling 12 year old kid.

Here is a  sampling of how Twitter reacted:

So even though Brady himself  doesn't tweet, he sure does create a lot of content. Or, maybe people just like writing about balls. Either way, expect many tweets to be written about Brady during the game. 

 

 

Russell Wilson (@DangeRussWilson) isn't as well known as Brady but that doesn't take away from his success: his win in Super  Bowl XLVII in  2014 made him the third youngest  quarterback to ever win the big game, behind only Ben Roethlisberger and,  you guessed it, Tom Brady.

At the same time, Wilson has managed to pretty much avoid all of the controversy that has been surrounding the game lately. Good for a quarterback and his team, bad for creating buzz for an article like this.

I'm sure Russell will be mentioned quite a bit, but it won't be as fun as some of the other players.

Speaking of which...

 

 

 

Marshawn Lynch (@MoneyLynch) does not have the same social presence right now that some of the other players do, but he made such a splash this past week that there's no way he doesn't become a trending topic on social media.

During Super Bowl Media Day, a visablly annoyed Lynch refused to say anything to the media beyond the line, “I’m here so I won’t get fined” He said it a total of 27 times in just a few minutes. Lynch would have faced a $500,000 fine if he didn't show up, but  I guess nobody said he had to talk.

Instead, the NFL has come up with another reason to fine him, one that is even dumber than, "he won't answer inane questions from the media."

Anyway, Lynch's non-response, of  course, got turned into a meme:

 

Rob Gronkowski(@RobGronkowski) has been with the Patriots for five seasons, and his whole career, and found himself in the middle of th Deflate-Gate controversy when an old quote from Brady, all the way back in 2011, essentially pinned the blame on the tight end.

“When Gronk scores … he spikes the ball and he deflates the ball,” Brady said in the interview. “I love that, because I like the deflated ball. But I feel bad for that football, because he puts everything he can into those spikes.”

In response, Gronkowski made a joke on Twitter that caused a bit of a stir.

I expect that if Gronkowski spikes the ball at any point during the game, this meme will most definitely resurface.

Also, it should be noted that Gronkowski is the only player on this list with a LinkedIn account, meaning he's the only one trying to network. Good for him for thinking ahead!

So there you go, the players that are most likely to light up social media. If I had to take a guess as to who is going to win... I'd go with Brady, since he's the best known player, with Sherman as a possible upset, simply because you never know what he's going to do.

And, finally, if you need a reminder that this is just a game and really doesn't mean much to anyone's real life, here's a clip of Lynch and Gronkowski playing video games and laughing on Conan:

(Image source: nfl.com)

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What is Twitter?

Twitter is an online information network that allows anyone with an account to post 140 character messages, called tweets. It is free to sign up. Users then follow other accounts which they are interested in, and view the tweets of everyone they follow in their "timeline." Most Twitter accounts are public, where one does not need to approve a request to follow, or need to follow back. This makes Twitter a powerful "one to many" broadcast platform where individuals, companies or organizations can reach millions of followers with a single message. Twitter is accessible from Twitter.com, our mobile website, SMS, our mobile apps for iPhone, Android, Blackberry, our iPad application, or 3rd party clients built by outside developers using our API. Twitter accounts can also be private, where the owner must approve follower requests. 

Where did the idea for Twitter come from?

Twitter started as an internal project within the podcasting company Odeo. Jack Dorsey, and engineer, had long been interested in status updates. Jack developed the idea, along with Biz Stone, and the first prototype was built in two weeks in March 2006 and launched publicly in August of 2006. The service grew popular very quickly and it soon made sense for Twitter to move outside of Odea. In May 2007, Twitter Inc was founded.

How is Twitter built?

Our engineering team works with a web application framework called Ruby on Rails. We all work on Apple computers except for testing purposes. 

We built Twitter using Ruby on Rails because it allows us to work quickly and easily--our team likes to deploy features and changes multiple times per day. Rails provides skeleton code frameworks so we don't have to re-invent the wheel every time we want to add something simple like a sign in form or a picture upload feature.

How do you make money from Twitter?

There are a few ways that Twitter makes money. We have licensing deals in place with Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft's Bing to give them access to the "firehose" - a stream of tweets so that they can more easily incorporate those tweets into their search results.

In Summer 2010, we launched our Promoted Tweets product. Promoted Tweets are a special kind of tweet which appear at the top of search results within Twitter.com, if a company has bid on that keyword. Unlike search results in search engines, Promoted Tweets are normal tweets from a business, so they are as interactive as any other tweet - you can @reply, favorite or retweet a Promoted Tweet. 

At the same time, we launched Promoted Trends, where companies can place a trend (clearly marked Promoted) within Twitter's Trending Topics. These are especially effective for upcoming launches, like a movie or album release.

Lastly, we started a Twitter account called @earlybird where we partner with other companies to provide users with a special, short-term deal. For example, we partnered with Virgin America for a special day of fares on Virginamerica.com that were only accessible through the link in the @earlybird tweet.

 

What's next for Twitter?

We continue to focus on building a product that provides value for users. 

We're building Twitter, Inc into a successful, revenue-generating company that attracts world-class talent with an inspiring culture and attitude towards doing business.

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