Saturday, November 29, 2008

Getting the word out

Ah, kids these days.

Just a week after he was on the cover of the SportsBusiness Journal for the very same topic, Josh Bailey brought up Facebook in his media scrum this morning when discussing with the media that he’s staying an Islander for the 2008-09 season.

(See above: In their Nov. 17-23 issue, SBJ ran a headline that read “Can Facebook Change Sports?” and there was an image of Bailey skating through a Facebook page.)

The fact that Bailey had his photo on the cover had nothing to do with the story. It could have easily been Kyle Okposo, Patrick Kane or Greg Oden.

When asked by a reporter this morning how he told his former teammates in Windsor that he would not be rejoining them, the 19-year old Bailey said that he sent the team a Facebook message last night.

The SBJ article talked about how sports leagues and teams are using social networking websites to reach out to fans. But another way these types of websites are being used in sports is for athletes to keep in touch with each other. Almost every Islanders prospect has a personal Facebook page and after they meet at the summer mini-camps, they all keep in touch with each other online. It’s a friendship and bond that’s being created that wasn’t there 10, 15 or 20 years ago. The next generation of future Islanders are already teammates online.

I guess the art of the mass text message is out like Clear Pepsi.

How times have changed.

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