Manchester United Twitter page“New era, same spirit.”  With those four words the growth of social media as the primary access point to sport stepped up a gear yesterday with Manchester United becoming the latest major sports organisation to launch an official twitter page.
Within 90 minutes the number of followers had grown to over 100,000 and that number has now swelled to over 343,000, exceeding the number following Brian O’Driscoll and the Official GAA but still some way behind Rory McIlroy’s one million plus followers and Graeme McDowell’s near 500,000.
In Premier League terms United have lagged behind rivals City who have just under one million followers.  They have built using the most imaginative approach to the medium in the soccer sphere through painting hashtags on the pitch and conducting post match press conferences with players over twitter.
All of Ireland’s GAA County Boards have now been brought into the fold but in such a  fast paced world it is down to individuals pushing the medium to make it have the best effect.
Good examples in recent weeks within Irish sport have been the live ‘commentary’ offered by the FAI on the Women’s International friendly against Austria and Irish Cricket’s qualification for the Cricket World Cup as seen through the tweets of @IrelandCricket.
United have shown a good understanding of the benefits of the medium for fans and for sponsors in their first 24 hours with pictures tweeted from the plane on the club’s trip to Bangkok.
They could have done a little more branding of the fact that they were flying with Lufthansa as the new official airline partner but no doubt that will come on the next leg of the tour.
The best social media use is when it is imaginative, driven by genuine engagement on the part of the fans and subtle enough in terms of branding not to be seen as more than just another commercial vehicle.
Given Manchester United’s proven ability to make the most of commercial opportunities it will be worth following what they do having come late to the world of micro blogging.