Is twitter bad for sport.

This was a debate brought to me yesterday and there are a few points of interest I felt were raised.

Firstly having a son with Autism I have noticed a definate plus side as to why sports stars must be allowed to use twitter. Anybody with a charity or fund raising ideas has the ability to reach a wider audience when their favourite stars retweet links. Simply there is good that twitter can do but everybody needs to use it correctly or should get banned from the site.

Twitter Additions.
Following Darron Gibson and Darren Bent receiving abuse on twitter I wondered whether the programmers could add a simple block button or twitter as a united community should start a Twitter Offenders Register. Basically give people the choice as to whether they receive the dispicable abuse or not and in the worst cases having a list for everyone to see who is just on twitter to verbally assault sport stars and celebrities would act as a deterrent.

Twitter Users
When you join any social network as a person in the public eye, you have to expect fans to follow you. So you have a duty to your clubs, yourselves and the fans to behave in an appropriate manner. Ryan Babel is the example here for his fine when tweeting about ref Howard Webb. Yes referees may be over-protected but the respect campaign is working as long as consistency is maintained. That was poor judgement on the players part but the one that puzzles me is the Leeds United situation. Personally I would assume that information regarding a player injury would be available on a clubs website so why Simon Grayson banned his squad from twitter surprises me.

And in a nutshell that is my view on twitter. Twitter has a place in sport as it allows the average fan to follow favourite or young aspiring athletes and get closer to them than they otherwise would do. It has the possibility to break the stereo type that sports stars are beyond our reach. There are a lot of small good causes that can benefit from simple retweets and if everybody is aware of what is acceptable to post then I really fail so see a problem.