THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Right, that’s what I want - a text message every 2 minutes.  Cool idea in theory, but pretty pointless in practice.

Count me as the one person in America who fails to see the point of twitter.

I’m perfectly happy with my RSS feeds.

Jon, from that standpoint, are you against the idea of the scroll text on CNN and ESPN?

jon:  We’re also doing a lite feed, which is going to be a text about every 10 minutes or so and if people find that too much, we’ll have a super lite feed which only does score changes and end of game update or something.

While I really hope it’s successful, it’s also an experiment and it’ll definitely evolve to fit viewers needs.

Well, for what it is worth, I thought the idea was cool enough to sign up for twitter and change my text plan to accommodate (probably two things I should have done by now, but this was the impetus).

I love the idea of a superlite feed.  If you added that, I’d subscribe to all of those.  Though it may turn out that the light feed is sufficiently light to do so (though I doubt it - 20-30 updates every ten minutes if fully subscribed).

Sorry if that came across as harsh - I have just been hearing so much about Twitter and I just don’t get it.  Mostly because I’m growing to appreciate the value of uninterupted time more and more, but that’s just me.

Tango - not exactly sure what you mean by the “scroll text” - I assume that’s some kind of constantly updating news feed on those sites?  I rarely go to those sites, but in theory I’m not against the idea of it, because it’s not intrusive.  I would go to cnn.com _when I want to_, and see what’s new there.  If cnn.com sent me text message whenever a new story popped up there, I’d go insane.

I actually do have to take back what I originally said, at least partially - as I can see the value of it in rare cases (I’m stuck at a wedding during game 7 of the World Series).

The lite and superlite feeds are a better idea too.

But really, do I need to know about this stuff in real time?  I can view the scoreboard, see what happened, and visit fangraphs a couple times a day and get the same information.  If there is a very particular time when I am so concerned about a game that I can’t stand it, and need real-time info, I can watch one of the live feeds on yahoo or espn, or fangraphs or whatever.

About real-time alerts in general - I only see their value in cases where immediate action is advantageous.  Say, if I owned stock in some company and their offices just burned down, I’d want to know about that ASAP so I can (hopefully) dump my stock. 

I guess in this case I see real-time updates as non-essential and a huge drain on productivity.  Also it will create so much noise - my phone would be vibrating non-stop, and there will be times when I don’t check it because I’m in the middle of something.  In the middle of all those game updates is going to be a (relatively important) message from a friend or something.

Just my thoughts…

Jon, I think your concerns are more than valid.

When I used to go to weddings in Montreal, without fail, we would get one announcement at around 9:30pm every night: the final score of the Canadiens game (especially since we’d be in the playoffs at that time).

So, you can easily have targetted Twitter feeds to link to the type of person you are.  If you simply want to know the important updates, say: “final score of my favorite team”, then you would get one alert every day.

If you need to have a constant update while you are away from your desk, then you may want to know every single pitch.

Or something in-between.  Clearly an a-la-carte menu would satisfy everyone.

Jon, from that standpoint, are you against the idea of the scroll text on CNN and ESPN?

I think that Tango was talking about the stations, not their websites.  I’m not a fan of them.  It makes the screen too busy.  They’ve given me a headache in the past.  IF I want news, I’ll check a website.

Right, I was talking about the TV.  Some people like the “stock ticker” information (they love to see how much money they are losing by the second!), and others don’t.

The a-la-carte option means to each his own and everyone is happy.

One other thing, I think it’s only a matter of time before you’ll see phones having a lot more options for SMS.  I think some already do, where you might be able set ringtones for certain texts. Twitter is always coming in on 40404 in the US, so you’d be able to set that not to ring.

The current mets/reds game has been “tweeting” away and we’re 20 minutes in and only 1 tweet so far for the quick feed, with 10 or so for the full feed.

The full feed has other uses too, since there’s a full twitter API.

Right, I was talking about the TV.  Some people like the “stock ticker” information (they love to see how much money they are losing by the second!), and others don’t.

Ah, ok.  I don’t have a real problem as long as they don’t constantly repeat themselves.  For example, I think they said that “Arod feels 70%” during the game yesterday at least once a minute.  That’s ridiculous.

I think the difference here is that the scrolling news there is in the context of what I’m watching, and more importantly, it’s because I’m passively watching something.  I don’t need to be “in the zone” to watch a baseball game - as a result, context switches between watching Lowe pitching and seeing other news on the bottom of the screen are quick and painless.

But say I’m writing a program, or reading a book or something, and someone came and put a piece of paper in front of my face with the text of this news announcement (or equivalently, if they text me, or call, or whatever).  Then my concentration is lost, and it’s not easy to get it back. 

So there may be many times when it’s not problem at all to get a text update of a baseball game.  If I’m eating, I’m not going to “lose the zone” of eating because I got alerted that Derek Jeter just struck out.  But at the same time, it’s rare that I think the annoyance of constant updates would be worth it (really important games, like I said - that’s about it).

A-la-carte, then, solves your issue right?

Heck, maybe David can set it so that you have an “automatic snooze” during dinner time, and an “automatic super heavy” during bus rides home, just like your phone lets you change volume levels, or vibrate, or silence.

As long as we agree that your concerns are more than legitimate and that those concerns have solutions, then there is no issue.

Sure, makes sense.  I don’t know how much of this is in David’s hands (as opposed to Twitter’s), but for what it’s worth, I think my “at a wedding during the playoffs” setting would be something like:

Notify me when:
- a half inning is over
- a run-scoring play occurs
- if it’s close and late (to be defined), after each play

"if it’s close and late (to be defined)”

i.e., Leverage Index > 2, after each play

LI > 4 after each pitch

LI > 8, go to the kitchen and watch the game