Unfortunately I didn’t get to see the FSU vs. Maryland game last night. Those of you that have been following me via Twitter know that I got rid of cable a few months back. Tara and I were both very tired and didn’t feel like leaving the house last night, especially to hit a loud sports bar that would be carrying the game.
Photo courtsey of gtmcknight
I decided that I was going to get my fill of the game via the interwebs today. My hope was that social media could recreate the experience of actually being at an FSU Football game when I woke up in the morning. I hopped on Flickr and Facebook thinking I would see pictures of my friends tailgating. Nothing. Not a single photo from the game on Flickr from anyone (not just my friends). I tried an array of query strings, if the photos are out there they are not tagged or titled. Seriously!?! Where are all the half-drunken photos of people gnawing on sausages and chicken wings? Where are the photos from the stands? What about the post-game celebration?
I searched for some blog posts from actual bloggers. Nope. The only thing of substance I found was mainstream media and some hardcore sports sites reporting a recap of the game. I was able to find some tweets about the game via Twitter search, but you can’t get much from 140 characters.
For those of you interested The Florida State Seminoles beat #22 Maryland 37-3 on the road in an upset. FSU has won 17 of the 19 all-time meetings with Maryland.
I am happy that I was able to get the essentials from the mainstream, but I am bummed social media failed to deliver the experience I was hoping for. Social media has come a long way but it still lags behind traditional media in timeliness. Bloggers typically have no discipline, no rules, no deadlines. I am sure that photos, videos and blog posts will start to emerge later today (when people are finished with their hangovers) but I will have already moved on. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, I like updating my content when I feel like it. However, it does put social media at a disadvantage.
I believe the future of social media is going to be about speed of post and ease of capture. Who can share a full experience first? I am going to do a blog post about it later this week. I’ll show you how my post about the Burger King Wallet drove a ton of traffic to this site, not because it was the best but because it was the first.
You have to look at what you were wanting information on or wanted to personally comment on.
For example, you couldn’t stop the political rants on the twitter stream during the last weeks of the 2008 election.
As for FSU football, most fans at the game or watching it at home were more interested in watching the game rather than social media-izing it.
I couldn’t see the game due to prior commitments, but I was following the game thanks to my brother’s text messages, Yahoo’s Sports page for the game and the “live blog” at Tallahassee Democrat’s NoleSports.com.
That was a good mixture of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 that allows me to get a good idea of what’s going on at the game even though I wasn’t there.
I’m sure the lack of social media on the FSU game was a direct result of the talent level of their team. Had you been searching for Gator social media, you’d still be browsing through all of the posts 3 days later.