(This is the 3rd and final post in a 3-part series concerning technology and it's impact on sports, sponsored by Samsung. You can find these articles all across SBNation. If you missed it, be sure to check out our first post which talks about how live-streaming has changed our lives, as well as the second post talking about how tailgating has evolved.)
Long gone are the days when you had to actually make a decision about which football game you wanted to watch. Remember those days? When you couldn't decide whether to watch the Florida Gators versus the Tennessee Volunteers or the Florida St. Seminoles-Miami Hurricanes game? What a mess.
And March Madness?! Forget it. I'm in sports heaven nowadays whereas just 5 years ago I was only able to watch one game at a time, and whatever region I was in was choosing it for me!
And moreover, you had to wait for the bottom line (was there even a bottom line back then?) or you had to time commercials perfectly to catch the scores of the other games. And that's assuming they were actually on TV!
Nope, now we've got smartphones, live streaming, picture-in-picture. Oh yeah, and ESPN. We're absolutely overloaded with information. Literally whatever we want. I think i knew about Brett Favre and his dongslinging before it actually made it's way to Deadspin.
See you for more TMI after The Jump.
The overflowing informational network that has been created has dynamically changed the sports world. Facebook has become the most visited site in the world. Bigger than Google. No, seriously.
You're an outcast if you aren't on Twitter these days. I can vouch that I resisted the concept of Tweeting (or becoming a Tweetah, as The Dream would say) forever. But you can't be involved in blogging without it. You want your news as it breaks? Get on Twitter. I mean like right now. Go.
There's no better example of this than what went on last weekend. Let's take you through the play-by-play of how my Sunday went:
Around 8:30 a.m. I got up to hit the head. I've got a BBM (Blackberry Message for you anti-technology folk hanging on to your Nokia's for the snake game) from The Dream that says one thing, albeit a scary thing: JVP news, call me.
15 minutes later I've learned that there may be some sort of, uh, situation developing. Within minutes I'm chatting with my other Villanova bloggers. An hour later I've got photo evidence (don't ask, it's not coming out until after Villanova announces a punishment (or lack thereof) of what happened.
All of this via Blackberry, Facebook, E-Mail, and Twitter. Email has been around for a while. But the other 3? Those are recent developments. All contributing to breaking news.
Does this story make it out eventually? Yes. But The New York Post didn't report on it until Monday - and their report was completely wrong. We had it here a mere few hours after it took place - we had every single detail. THAT is what is different about the exchange of information today.
Is it all good? I think so. As an avid fan and a blogger, I love breaking news. I love having tons of mediums at my fingertips to get my blog's name out there. Are there bad sides to it? Of course. Sure, I would have liked to have known about Brett Favre and Jenn Sterger. Did I need to see Favre's Army? God no.
So tell us what you think - has the rise of 'social media' been a good or a bad thing for sports?