Twitter is starting to roll out some new functionality, which I know is important since they rarely make any changes to their core platform (instead they rely on 3rd party applications and users).  “Twitter Lists” essentially allows you to create groups of people that you follow.  Instead of one big mess of a tweet stream, you’ll have the option to only see messages from that particular group you create.  Additionally, lists can be followable, giving great value to users who can curate users about any given topic.

Why I am I writing about this on Friarblog?  Well, I am going to start creating a few lists that I think will be extremely useful for Friar fans to follow.  Also, if someone is new to Twitter or hasn’t joined yet, it makes starting up extremely painless since they can start following relevant people right away.

The great part of this is as I keep adding new users to these lists, you will automatically see their updates if you follow the list.  So sit back, relax, and start following these to starting getting all the real-time information about Providence Friars Basketball that you can get.

LISTS

pc-basketball

This is going to be the official group, consisting of any accounts related to the school, staff, or media.  Right now it only consists of Coach Keno, Coach Ro, The athletics office, and John Rooke.  I’m sure everyone on Twitter reading this already follows these folks, but I think I can build a nice group from this.

pc-basketball-fans

Anyone who considers themselves a Providence College Basketball fan on Twitter should be on this list!  I’ve only grabbed a few people off the top of my head so far, so please leave your Twitter name in the comments and I will get you added.  This should be an excellent list to follow when a game is on during the season.

big-east-basketball-blogs

I’ve only added a few so far, but within the next few days I am going to try to add all of my colleagues on here so you can easily keep your finger on the pulse of the BIG EAST blogosphere.

As always, you can follow me on Twitter at Friarblog.  Remember, be sure to comment with your Twitter name so I can add you to the list!

I find Twitter to be pretty fun.  I found some cool Friar fans on there so far, and there are plenty of people to talk college basketball with.  One of my followers sent a message to the official DunkinDonuts account, so I immediately started following The Dunk too.

Friarblog definitely runs on Dunkin’.  Without the Dunk, there would be no Friarblog.  Just a tired, cranky, and irritable waste of space with a ginormous headache polluting the internet.

Anyway, the following Twitter messages were exchanged.

Remember, if you are on Twitter, be sure to follow Friarblog!

Don’t know what Twitter is? Get with the times!

From their website:

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

So basically you can send short messages of up to 140 characters and follow people so you can receive their messages.  It works through the web, your cellphone, and other applications people build.

The man behind the great site StatSheet.com announced earlier this week a service built on top of Twitter called StatTweets.com.

Here is the about blurb:

For a growing number of people, Twitter is an important source of information and social interaction. Yet little has been done to integrate sports data in interesting ways.

Most sports-related media outlets that have a Twitter account simply blast everything through a single account. I don’t know about you, but I don’t find this very useful. I prefer Twitter updates targeted at just the teams I’m interested in. And I’m not talking about just a news feed. It needs to be as if each sports team had a twitter account and a stats geek behind the scenes tweeting interesting stuff.

That’s exactly what the StatTweets accounts are intended to do (but it is all automated). Not only can you follow just the teams you are interested in, but you can interact with each account to retrieve team and player stats dynamically. Check out the usage pagefor more details.

So what does this mean?  You can follow @ProvidenceStats and get in-game score updates, rankings, and point spreads via automatic Twitter posts.

Next time I am away during a game, I am defintely going to follow the score through this account.  I’ll let you know how it goes!

When you are away from home and trying to get scores through your phone, what do you use?

Another cool feature is that you can send stat requests to the account and it will reply with the stats!

@UNCStats #StatMe

Results in @UNCStats (UNC Basketball) sending this reply:

@statsheet FG% 51.4, FT% 71.4, 3PT% 41.1, PPG 97.0, RPG 47.8, APG 21.1, TOPG 11.4, SPG 11.9, BPG 6.0, FPG 16.6

Pretty cool stuff

If there are any existing Twitter users out there, be sure to follow me!