|
Shaquille O'Neal May Have Created a New Trend With Today's Retirement announcement "That's why I'm telling you first...I'm about to retire" With those words, Shaquille O'Neal officially retired from the game of basketball. He released the video via Twitter to his almost four million followers. He was quick and to the point and now Shaq rides off into the wind. Did Shaq just change the game when it comes to breaking news? If an athlete that has to announce something...why wouldn't he control the message completely? Shaq made it crystal clear that he's retiring, no need for speculation or analysis. That's the beauty of Twitter. Athletes have a platform to set the record straight. The media is always blamed for misconstruing facts and misquoting players—but Twitter changed all of that. Shaq is the first big athlete to make this sort of announcement via social media...will he be the last? MUST READ: What Direction is Your NBA Team Going In? The athlete can go out on their own terms with their own fare well speech. Sure Shaq will have a press conference "officially" telling the world he is done playing basketball, but the video is the first thing everyone has already seen. He choose to pan out and show his beach view before the video ended, giving us all of glimpse of how he plans to spend retirement. Shaq was one of the first athletes on Twitter, helping the social media site become a juggernaut, now he is once again changing the way players use the media. Now it's Twitter followers that get the news first—straight from the source.
source: |
