Past The Press Box : Colin O'Keefe of The American Sportswriter : On Sportswriting, Social Media, Sports Blogging, Journalism, Sports Marketing

Over the past decade we've gone from worrying about what people might find when they're searching your name on the internet to worrying about what they won't. Of course, no one wants random bits of embarrassment to come up when someone Googles their name but almost worse: finding nothing. How unimpressed are you when that happens? I'm usually stunned.

Over at Innovation in College Media they have a great post on utilizing social media to land a job, with some insight from David Spink of Scribnia.com.

A personal blog or portfolio site can serve as the corner stone to the online image that new journalists must shape, said Spinks.

"It's really important that you shape a that image of yourself -- that image that comes up when people seek you online," Spinks said. "It's up to you personally how you present yourself. Part of blogging and social networking is showing more of your personality and being more transparent. But then there's the saying that you shouldn't have anything online that you wouldn't show your mother."

In college, "what's your major?" is the ice-breaking line to beat all cliche ice-breaking lines. Whenever I used this and somone answered journalism, I advised them—almost on the verge of desperation—to start a blog. It's crucial. But as Spinks points out, there's a little more to it than that.

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Twitter is really starting to press with the new features and services. Some seem cool (Lists) while others can be frustrating (the new re-tweet function), but it's interesting nonetheless to watch them attempt to expand their offering. Twitter is focusing especially hard on appealing to businesses and their new 'Contributors' feature is aimed directly at them. A bit of background on the service, which could be great tool for sportswriters and sports bloggers, from the Twitter Blog:

The feature we are beta testing is called 'Contributors' – it enables users to engage in more authentic conversations with businesses by allowing those organizations to manage multiple contributors to their account. The feature appends the contributor's username to the tweet byline, making the business to consumer communication more personal; e.g. if @Twitter invites @Biz to tweet on its behalf, then a tweet from @Twitter would include @Biz in the byline so that users know more about the real people behind organizations.

The service could answer a lot of questions for users, such as "Should my Twitter name be my blog/business?", "Should I have a personal account and blog account?" and "Who should I have readers follow, myself or my blog?"

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UStream has already made significant of headway in the world of sports, what with it being the host of Stephon Marbury's ridiculous 24-hour webcast and a live sports/COPS mash-up featuring JR Smith and Eddy Curry getting pulled over. The service has given professional athletes an unprecedented ability to connect with their fans. As of today, they'll now have the same opportunity on their iPhones.

The service has been available on Nokia phones since March but having it on the iPhone opens new opportunities: the iPhone took overtook Nokia for the overall market share leadership in the worldwide smartphone segment this summer.

While the first athlete to undertake the task while likely get more attention than anyone else in the sports world using the service, mobile broadcasting has the opportunity to be a phenomenal tool for sportswriters.

Where it's allowed, sportswriters could live broadcast interviews immediately following a game. While press conferences for big games are already broadcast live by media outlets, escaping the formality of a press conference allows a sportswriter to air interviews with whatever player they choose to speak with (not just stars, coaches), air the complete interview and ask more questions than they'd normally be allowed to. I've seen some reporters—Lakers writer Mike Trudell comes to mind—using Twitvid and Twitpic to provide readers with quick updates but live video brings a whole new dimension.

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