MLB makes Twitter private to give prizes away
The MLB Twitter account has received a lot of attention, mostly negative, due to their lame puns, RT begging, and so on and so forth. But today, their ineptitude may have taken the cake.
MLB has made their account private, and it will remain private from noon to 6 PM eastern, so they can give away prizes.
People generally make their accounts private so that they can avoid random people from looking at their tweets and only let approved people look at them... not so you can give away "exclusive prizes." This is supposed to be a professional account covering a league. What if a major piece of news happens, like a star player breaking his leg and getting hurt? Is MLB going to ignore the news so they can continue to give away tickets and giftcards? And if they don't ignore it, are they going to turn their account public again so people can retweet the news at will?
And here's another really irritating thing about this private nonsense: there are two weeks left in the season, and baseball is in the midst of an intense pennant race. In addition to the ten current playoff teams, there are no less than seven clubs within five games of a playoff berth. You'd think there would be more attention focused on the games on the field as opposed to giving away prizes for no reason. There are also seven games starting during the "private hours" with six of those seven games featuring potential playoff teams. No updates on those games during private hours? That's cool.
Social media really isn't too complicated to master... yet, MLB seems to find new ways to screw things up. Is "PRIVATE" in big red letters something you ever want to see on social media from a pro sports league? While winning prizes is never a bad thing, why is MLB shutting down their entire Twitter operation to the outside world? It's against the mission of social media. You know when a good time to do this would be? The day after the All-Star Game. Or, a day in the middle of the playoffs where no games are going on. Or, during Spring Training. Not in the heat of a pennant race where there are a plethora of meaningful games going on.
Wow.... that's just absurd! Almost hard to believe, but not much surprises me anymore these days.
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Or instead of making the main @MLB account private, they just use their infinite resources to create some garbage @MLBGIVAWAY account that they can make private and give away prizes from that.
"...why is MLB shutting down their entire Twitter operation to the outside world?" If they're in the "outside world", meaning not already on Twitter, then I presume they don't care about MLB's Twitter account and whatever they have to do or say (or tweet). This contest is just for a few hours today. No big deal.
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This is some seriously dumb outrage. Being spammed with random crap for contests and "RT this" nonsense is certainly annoying. But thinking the MLB news world is going to go into chaos without that account? You're absurd. There are thousands of professionals (including dozens on the MLB payroll) and tens of thousands of enthusiasts that will go on just fine for 6hrs.
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@Grif_E That's not the point. People will get their news, but @MLB is the official mouthpiece of the league. If they need to address a major story (say Yunel Escobar, for example), they will have deliberately handicapped their ability to spread their official message via a core component of social media.
Sounds like a whiny lil nerd who wont get all his info on todays games. fuckin cry me a river! how about turning on a TV or computer, nerd!
