Comments on: Twitter’s power serves a Guardian ‘disaster’

By: Fantasy Files – Gameweek 25 « Back Page Football

Fantasy Files – Gameweek 25 « Back Page Football — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 17:13:32 +0000

[...] should start each column with a topical quip or humorous anecdote. With Andy Gray, Richard Keys and Ian Prior providing plenty of ammo of late, this should be an easy task. However, this is not what this [...]

By: The Other Back Pages – The week’s best football writing « Back Page Football

Sun, 30 Jan 2011 13:47:03 +0000

[...] In other news this week, Twitter was in the spotlight thanks to the Guardian website. Promising an exclusive later in the evening, Ian Prior caused the internet to practically collapse on itself with excitement only for their “major story” to turn out to be a baseless rumour about a potential summer bid for a player already linked to about 100 clubs. On this very website, Kevin Coleman did an excellent job of looking Twitter’s power getting slightly out of hand. [...]

By: Around the Grounds – 24th to 30th Jan 2011 | One Match Ban

Around the Grounds – 24th to 30th Jan 2011 | One Match Ban — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 09:09:24 +0000

[...] The Guardian had a difficult week after they announced that they would release an exclusive, major transfer story on Twitter. Cue a guessing frenzy on the social networking site in anticipation of the announcement, which then turned into a backlash when the story turned out to be less than major. Back Page Football posted a great analysis of how the #guardianfail transpired. [...]

By: Will

Will — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 14:41:01 +0000

Really good piece Kev,

But I think part of the backlash was caused by other papers de-bunking the “exclusive” so quickly.

Especially when you listen to Thursday morning’s Football Weekly and you hear Sid Lowe basically saying that other papers had printed rubbish on the Chelsea-Aguero rumours and that the Guardian were above that sort of thing…

Ah well, either way Twitter is here to stay and is an extremely powerful tool, and is here to stay.

Don’t be surprised to see players banned from using it in future contracts.

By: Thomas Levin

Thomas Levin — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 10:21:43 +0000

Twitter is a monster, Ian may have promised a major transfer news yesterday. But I think Footballing public wanted something concreate.

after the #guardianexlusive jokes, guesses etc… it was going to be very hard to live up to the hype. I don’t think Ian fully understood what he unleashed. But I thought he dealt with it well and in all good humour too. Full respect to the man.

It’s great to connect with people on twitter, but because twitter gives people the ability to share the opinion. Some people need to realise that they don’t always have the right to say what they are saying.

By: Neil Sherwin

Neil Sherwin — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 00:44:43 +0000

Sure it might have been an anti climax but there were some hilarious attempts at guessing the rumour, and that again led to some effective networking on Twitter which is of course is what it’s for.

To play devil’s advocate, The Guardian ran a similar story about Ronaldo and his move to Madrid which was shot down in the same fashion. Look how that turned out.

Having said that, my initial reaction was one of annoyance having stayed up until almost 2am on a work night for a bloody Gareth Bale rumour!

By: Matt Visser

Matt Visser — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 00:14:08 +0000

Get twitter…

By: Kevin Coleman

Kevin Coleman — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 23:23:55 +0000

To be fair to Mark, I put that in after his comment.

My prediction was at best, or it’s biggest, something involving a big player with huge money, or at worst – Suarez to Liverpool!

And all we got was a rumour.

By: @itbeganin1992

@itbeganin1992 — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 23:13:08 +0000

Mark there is a picture showing what Ian Prior said midway through the article. Looking at the pic it wasn’t much but i’m sad to say I was one of the many speculating what it would be (Fabregas to Barca in the summer rubber stamped) on twitter whilst also frantically F5′ing theGuardian site!

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 21:57:26 +0000

Might have been useful if you had printed the tweets which caused the hype. and indicated how quickly the hype spread.

The article assumes prior knowledge of the story.