For my real job I tend to follow things in the web world. The rise of Twitter has been really interesting the past year and a half or so. For awhile, like most new things in the web world, growth was for new adopters and some techno-geeks. Then as with most growth curves (you can mirror the above curve with Facebook traffic or youtube traffic), you tend to reach a mass where the thing snowballs. You are seeing it with this company right before your eyes. Right now someone is signing up who has never heard of it before, and that someone is not a tech-geek, he/she is someone like you.Harness racing is starting to be embraced. Harnessracing.com has started on Twitter, among others in the game. I would not be surprised if this years Standardbred Wagering Conference is on twitter, so folks can keep tabs in real time.
Like we spoke about during the Arizona Symposium on the blog, there is most certainly some way to use this better, and intertwine it with other avenues for racing. I am a big believer that there are plenty of things out there to use properly, or create, that we just have not thought of yet for racing. I hope if we do brainstorm and come up with something, it is written up with a 2.0+ mindset that can catch fire. Because when you are using some of these things early and they are unique, it can be a boon to business. It would be a hell of a neat thing to see harness racing with a curve like the above for a change.
Graphs courtesy quantcast.com. Full Twitter rankings and stats here.
6 comments:
Seems like twitter is for twits that are under-engaged in life and need a constant source of mental masturbation.
I've noticed an explosion in new users with few posts -- most along the lines of, "Figuring this Twitter thing out" -- and an increasing number of racing people joining the service. Some seem to be having a lot of fun:
http://twitter.com/ThePamplemousse
Cute.
Maybe it's time for a racing and technology conference? TechRacing 2009 -- the point being to bring together the thoroughbred and harness industries, representatives from tracks, publications, tote companies, horsemen's groups, officials, with the aim of exploring how APIs, streaming video, Twitter, whatever could be used in the game. There's much to talk about, much that could be done to bolster business.
Interesting juxtaposition in comments :)
That's a great idea JC, simply because the biggest group with data and stuff is racing itself. If it can be shown how it can help in different ways it might be interesting.
Maybe we don't need a commissioner, we need a CTO.
BTW, best article I think I have ever read on the newspaper for those who are interested in changing models.
http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable/
After Shirky, ea complementary piece by Steven Johnson.
The TBA just added Joe Drape, the NTRA, and Alex Brown to the Twitter feed. So, if you're scared or not sure what Twitter is you can get a little preview over @ our homepage
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