SF Giants Tweeting Up the Ol' Ball Game- It is social media overkill?

On April 30, the San Francisco Giants will hold the largest baseball event "Tweetup" in history. A Tweetup is an event where folks come together face to face in real life, not more @'s or RT's. It is the real deal. This is great, right? Using social media to connect with fans is an excellent way to build fan loyalty and retain a solid fan base by allowing fans to interact and engage with their favorite sports team. But to bring these "tweeters” together at an actually game would be even better.

For die-hard Giant's fans, or any sports team fan in general, twitter is a unique way to make fans feel like they are apart of something. How many times have you typed @SF_Giants (replace SF_Giants with your favorite celebrity or sports team) because you feel like the person on the receiving end will hear it? Apparently the Giants heard you because they are leveraging social media to further engage their fan base. However, I'm not sure how a social media "panel discussion" and America's favorite pass time go hand in hand.

The panel discussion is overkill. People go to baseball games for cheap beer, hot dogs, and of course, the love of the game. Why meddle with this winning formula? I must give a tip of the hat to the Giants though, because San Francisco is full of tech savvy people that would go nuts over this.

I would go out of sheer curiosity. $20 for the Tweetup Ticket doesn't seem like a bad deal, it includes the panel discussion, private two-hour Tweetup part, seating in the private Tweetup section, and it comes with a free shirts as well. I'm sold! I hope this includes the tickets as well, as there is no mention of it on the flyer.

These apparent social media experts, while designing this potentially historic event, forgot the basic tenets of social media: their fan base. They put the information out on the interweb hoping their fans would find it instead of continuing the dialogue that social media is supposed to help facilitate between brands and fans. I give the SF Giants a tip of the hat for this attempt because of the potentially genius social media initiated event. Hopefully my cynicism will be proven wrong, but I'll have to wait and see if @SF_Giants can bring their tweeters out to the ol' ball game.