The power of Twitter is instant information and the ability to disseminate extremely quickly. When news breaks, it quickly spreads as people retweet the information, or see other people retweeting it, and decide to do so themselves as well.

A pair of fake Twitter accounts which “reported” a pair of big Celtics news items fooled some fans and media yesterday.

https://twitter.com/Chris_Brousard/status/217684257513025536

Whoa. Blockbuster. Except Broussard is spelled wrong.

I hate it when that happens.

Then later last night, this was posted.

https://twitter.com/stephenasmifh/status/217800600509886465

This kept at least one sports editor in the office a little later than he intended.

But again, the account is one letter off. Why do people set up fake Twitter accounts and do this sort of thing? For exactly this reason. It’s too easy to just hit the “retweet” button. I’ve done it before when someone in my timeline had retweeted a fake account.

The Red Sox got back on track with a 5-1 win at Fenway Park over the Blue Jays. Five links from this morning:

Red Sox have varied contributors – Gordon Edes has a number of players making contributions to this win.

Cherington shoots down rifts between Red Sox players, Valentine – Danny Picard has the Sox GM saying that no players have come to him to complain about Bobby Valentine.

Doc Rivers thinks positive on Kevin Garnett return – Steve Bulpett has the Celtics coach believing that KG will be back.

What to watch for at Bruins’ development camp – DJ Bean tells us what to expect as the youngsters get together.

Options at QB for Patriots – Jeff Howe thinks that Brian Hoyer and Ryan Mallett offer the Patriots both depth and possible assets.

Monday’s BS Report with Bill Simmons featured Rich Levine from CSNNE.com, and they talked the state of Boston sports. You have get through the segment with Simmons’ Yankees fan buddy JackO first, but then it gets pretty good, though when they got to discussing the most popular athletes in Boston right now, somehow they left out Gronk.

I was wondering how Simmons knew Levine, and it turns out Levine was a finalist for the Sports Guy Intern contest with ESPN back in 2004.

Bob Lobel: The Greatest Moment of My Career – Which moment do you think it is?

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Published by Bruce Allen

Automattician.

7 thoughts on “Fake Twitter Accounts Targeting Celtics Fans, Media”

  1. My favorite part of the Simmons podcast was when they both said that Will Middlebrooks had been struggling lately on the same day he was named AL Player of the Week. But I’ll cut Simmons a break because it’s not like he’s a sports writer anymore.

    Fake twitter accounts are there to weed out the stupid. If you just believe everything you see without looking into it, then you are just dumb.

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  2. Levine hung in there with Simmons. Good point about the non-Gronk mention. Wondered as well what the Levine connection was too as I had noticed before that Simmons had followed him on Twitter for awhile.

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  3. In a surprising move Michael Felger has accepted a job at sports talker 1070 out of Madison Wisconsin. When reached for comment, Felger said, “It has always been my dream to cover the teams I grew up loving and still care about today. You can’t imagine how frustrating it is covering teams you honestly don’t care for. I will miss tweaking Boston fans though.”

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  4. I stopped caring about what Bill Simmons has to say about Boston sports a long time ago. Stick to writing columns about trashy reality shows, broheim.

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  5. Shall we call this VodkaGate?

    http://boston.cbslocal.com/2012/06/28/report-buchholz-attends-foxwoods-pool-party/

    HardballTalk is now mocking/attacking T+R/Boston media:

    “That’s a talk radio show in Boston which clearly has no desire to make a big deal out of this. I mean, they only decided to call it a “vodka-sponsored pool party” at a casino, without mentioning the charity aspect first. Which, in turn, predictably set the neanderfans loose:”

    http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/06/28/some-people-have-a-problem-with-clay-buchholz-going-to-a-charity-event-really/

    This is fun!

    And, the reason Bob Kraft owns the Revs and not Arsenal or some other EPL team? No Salary Cap (big reason many want to own a team: see Manchester City/Chelsea)

    http://boston.cbslocal.com/2012/06/27/robert-kraft-lack-of-salary-cap-kept-me-away-from-epl/

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  6. I just posted the quote about not owning an EPL team. What’s the next best thing? NFL Europe:

    From the “It looks like it does not matter but I think it does” Department:

    http://bit.ly/KOKMs5

    Speaking on a promotional tour of London ahead of his team’s NFL
    International Series meeting with the St. Louis Rams at Wembley Stadium
    on Sunday October 28, the influential Kraft stressed the importance of
    growing American football overseas, Neil Reynolds of Skysports reports.

    “I personally think we should have a franchise in London and that is
    something I am going to push for,” Kraft said. “I think I said that the
    last time we were over here in 2009 and before this next decade is out, I
    hope we have a team here. I think that would be right for the NFL and
    this fan base has proven they deserve it.

    “I think we’re starting to tap out in the United States. If you look
    at the last Super Bowl we were in this past season, we had over 180
    million people watching – that’s almost two thirds of America. So for us
    to grow the game, we have to expand globally. Having seen the kind of
    support we have received here in London, it is the intention of the NFL
    owners to get two games here, starting next year.

    “The only bad part of putting a franchise in London is that I can assure you it won’t be the Patriots who are moving here.”

    NFL prohibits dual-team ownership like many leagues do, because of the obvious conflicts of interest, but I would not be surprised if this is really laying the groundwork for one.

    When the Jags were for sale, it was speculated that we would have the “London Shags” long before we had the LA Jags. It still looks like that way. (I think this was Peter King, who is as tuned in as anyone.)

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