Social Media Football: A Failed Experiment

Last week, I went to the Pats / Chargers game (i.e. the AFC Championships). The plans were absolutely last minute. In fact, I mentioned that I might be going to the game on the Topaz podcast PRobecast, which is recorded Friday afternoons. @dough suggested I make it a social media football game. And I'm writing to say that I failed. Here's why and what happened:

I did end up going to the game. And I spent the better part of the morning beforehand enabling mobile twitter. I thought I had it working the way I wanted, with only @s and DMs coming to my phone, and we left in a hurry to pick up everyone.

Moments after arriving at the tailgate in Foxboro, my pants caught fire. Immediately after putting out the flames, and taking off the smoldering layer of pants, I thought to myself, "I need to tweet this."

So I did:

skalik so five minutes into a tailgate and my pants catch fire


And I patiently waited, while I was checking my leg for damage, for the shocked @s. But none came, at least not to my phone. The "track skalik" failed me, my network didn't. Here are the reply tweets I found the next morning.

leahjones @skalik i think we need more of the story and pics. 01:11 PM January 20, 2008

DougH @skalik Your pants caught fire? That's been happening a lot to lady-fans of Tom Brady, I hear 02:09 PM January 20, 2008

	stuartma @skalik How, exactly, did you set your pants on fire? (Had to write that ;)) 02:30 PM January 20, 2008

There's the mockery I had expected and looked forward to. But I had to wait until the following Monday to see it...

I continued to tweet what was going on at the game. I wasn't sure if my tweets were getting through, so I didn't tweet much.

Why did it fail?
It was a failed experiment because there's no sense in talking if you don't hear any replies. Engagement was lost, at least for the time. It made one hell of a story time Monday morning.