Can social networks work for hockey?


all of a sudden the Whole World seems to be tWeeting and faCebook is a verb, but is all this soCial netWorking useful for hoCkey fans, players and Clubs? push launChed James stoCk into CyCberspaCe to find out.


contact with one another than ever before. The statistics are mind-blowing for all the major sites (see ‘Social media by numbers p.16’) so the big question has to be, how can hockey utilise these powerful tools? The boom in social media has to be


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seen as an opportunity to keep the fans, players, clubs, governing bodies and everyone else in touch with all aspects of the sport. “Social media is for anybody and everybody. It’s very simple and anyone can use it.” That is the opinion of Rachel Clarke, social media strategist at Momentum London. Appropriately enough, this interview could never have happened without the two of us meeting on Twitter. Indeed, many of the interviews conducted for this article were arranged through Twitter. This is exactly the reason social media are so powerful: like-minded people can interact with one another when otherwise they may never have met.


ocial media have arrived for many of us over the last twelve months. The rise of Twitter and Facebook has bought more people into


In recent years Twitter and Facebook


have emerged as leaders in the social media field. Twitter lets a user send and receive 140 character messages to and from a group of ‘followers’, or, in fact, pretty much anyone on the system. Facebook allows users to share and disseminate pictures, videos, comments and recommendations to a circle of ‘friends’ and, again subject to some controls, to pretty much anyone on the system, or anywhere on the Internet. Player image: Grant Treeby/Hockey Australia


Facebook and Twitter are now


probably the easiest place outside of an astroturf to find other people who love hockey! The short, sharp and instant world of


Twitter fits the celebrity culture of the age almost perfectly. There are some big names from the sporting world using it every day. Rio Ferdinand (@ rioferdy5), Graeme Swann (@swannyg66) and Lee Westwood (@westwoodlee) are just a few of the regulars. It certainly


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whAt Are sociAl mediA?


Social media use the Internet to make publication a two-way dialogue and pretty much open to anyone. Indeed in social media the users contribute all or almost all of the content. Twitter and Facebook are a specific type of social media site – the social networking site. The first reconisable networking site with profiles and ‘friends’ was SixDegrees.com which launched in 1997. Facebook started as a US college network in 2004 and Twitter in 2006.


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