Are twitter followers reflective of the fan base?

[Beaver]

MSU Football -- 72,000 followers (Dan has 81k)
MSU Baseball -- 50,000 followers
MSU Basketball -- 16,000 followers

Question for the board... Is this how you would rank the MSU programs in terms of what you care most about?

Obviously the past 5 years (twitter explosion) have been better for baseball than basketball, but for me I'd rather have the basketball team win the championship than the baseball team.

[messageboardsuperhero]

MSU Football -- 72,000 followers (Dan has 81k)
MSU Baseball -- 50,000 followers
MSU Basketball -- 16,000 followers

Question for the board... Is this how you would rank the MSU programs in terms of what you care most about?

Obviously the past 5 years (twitter explosion) have been better for baseball than basketball, but for me I'd rather have the basketball team win the championship than the baseball team.

There's your answer. Hell, I just checked and UM has more basketball followers than we do. Does that mean their program is more popular than ours? Having lived in both Starkville and Oxford, I very seriously doubt that. UM people don't give two shit about basketball- even when they're halfway decent. IMO it just means their program has been more successful in the past few years when twitter got popular in college sports.

[Beaver]

There's your answer. Hell, I just checked and UM has more basketball followers than we do. Does that mean their program is more popular than ours? Having lived in both Starkville and Oxford, I very seriously doubt that. UM people don't give two shit about basketball- even when they're halfway decent. IMO it just means their program has been more successful in the past few years when twitter got popular in college sports.

So to clarify...basketball is more important to you/this board? I know twitter obviously doesn't represent everything..most twitter users are younger than 30..But 50k to 16k is interesting to me given that this board is projecting starting lineups for February and talking about drafted signees in July...

[messageboardsuperhero]

So to clarify...basketball is more important to you/this board? I know twitter obviously doesn't represent everything..most twitter users are younger than 30..But 50k to 16k is interesting to me given that this board is projecting starting lineups for February and talking about drafted signees in July...

For me, baseball is my favorite sport. Football is number 2 and basketball is number 3. There was a very sizable gap between football and basketball a few months ago- but Howland has me interested again. If I had to put a rank on what I think MSU fans as a whole would rank them, it would be football a clear #1 and baseball/basketball as #2 and #3 based on which one is doing better at a given time.

One thing I will say about our fans is that we're pretty consistent in that we care a lot about all three of our big sports. It's not like Bama/Auburn where football is king and nothing else matters.

[DistrictDawg92]

As twitter and social media exploded, our basketball team imploded, I think there is a pretty direct relationship there. No one wanted an every day reminder of how bad our basketball team sucked, so no one followed the basketball twitter. If we start off next season strong I bet you would see the followers for basketball double. I think those numbers are more of a reflection of the currentish state of each sport, rather than how much our fans like each sport. Remember you can unfollow someone, it's kinda like stocks, when its good it goes up when its bad it goes down. If Cohen strikes out again next year the numbers would drop for baseball drastically.

[MSUDawg4Life]

I wouldn't assume followers on social media were fans. Many are probably just people interested in the program for one reason or another. I would guess the number of followers fluctuates with the fortunes of the team. If our basketball team has a better year, I would think their followers will rise. Bandwagon fans, media types and other folks just interested for one reason or another.

I follow all of the sports. There's going to be a base number of people like me who follow the team no matter what. I think most of those can be counted among true fans.

[Johnson85]

If I had to put a rank on what I think MSU fans as a whole would rank them, it would be football a clear #1 and baseball/basketball as #2 and #3 based on which one is doing better at a given time.

This is just a guess, but I would bet that Basketball is a clear #2 over baseball. I think we have a lot of passionate baseball fans that make it seem closer than it is, but that on sheer numbers, a lot more people would put basketball number 2. I'm not sure how to back that up though. I don't think season tickets are the right way to do it. TV numbers might be but the tv numbers would benefit from basketball being more popular overall usually, baseball isn't that available period, and the numbers during the Ray years are almost certainly not indicative. Donations measure passion, so they're not it.

[notsofarawaydawg]

Twitter followers do not necessarily read the tweets .. just means they clicked the FOLLOW button at some time. Most people do not follow twitter via their smartphone or tablet message feed. They just go and read on occasion and most never read the tweets. So, a twitter feed's number of followers could have just been a campaign to make the numbers look good. I look at my feed daily but don't follow it via the text message function because my company furnishes and pays for my phone and service (limited texts).