Twitter As New College Recruiting Tech Tool

LSU football coach Les Miles congratulated top-three NFL draft pick Tyson Jackson, wished former LSU wide receiver Demetrius Byrd a speedy recovery after his car accident and bragged about LSU’s performance in the annual spring football game.

Miles didn’t do these things at a press conference or radio interview but during a five-day span using his new Twitter account.

Twitter has grown by 1,382 percent from February 2008 to February 2009, according to Nielsen, resulting in an increase of about 6.56 million new unique visitors during that time frame. Now several athletic departments are catching onto the trend, using the platform to update fans and reach out to recruits.  USC coach Pete Carroll, Georgia coach Mark Richt and Tennessee coach Lane Kiffin already frequent their Twitter accounts.

However with new technology comes new risks of violating NCAA recruiting rules.  As long as the coaches are not using Twitter to contact individual prospective student-athletes and are abiding by other recruiting rules, there probably isn't an issue with them using Twitter.  After all, it is a one to many social medium.

While we are on the subject of Twitter, you can check us out on Twitter @PulseJam.  We are always interested in identifying new folks to follow to help us learn more about the exciting world of sports and technology.

Comments

[Jason Peck]

It's great to use Twitter but coaches and companies shouldn't ignore other channels. The overall % of US population that uses it is still very low, and 60% of people stop using the site after a month.

Twitter is great for certain things (esp. real time updates) but press conferences and radio interviews certainly still have their place.

[Phil Z]

I agree, however, I think we will begin to see some interesting new "applications" as the technology and the company mature