Saturday, November 21, 2009

Dater Watch - The Twitter Quitter *UPDATE

Adrian Dater has created a commotion in Denver. What's new, eh? Yesterday morning Dater posted a lengthy explanation, prefaced with a strong claim that this was his own doing, about why he is done with Twitter. He deleted his account and says he is done with the whole thing.
You can read his blog post here.
Looking at it this morning I noticed that this post has been retweeted 39 times. Every other post on the page averages about 2-3 retweets. Haha, ah the irony.
Of course there was heavy action on Twitter as the story spread and soon turned into a lot of bashing as locals took their shots at him for being a quitter.
Justin at The Avalanche Guild had plenty to say about it...
Grant at Hockeyism did as well...
Oh, there were a few supporters out there on Twitter, even locals, and a lot of support in the comments section of his blog. Most people seemed to be disappointed that he was bailing on Twitter. You can put me in that crowd. I liked that I could get his tweets on my phone and know breaking Avs news instantaneously.
As I've said before in Dater Watch, he seems to be a very reactive person and rather compulsive. He even says in the piece that it was a spontaneous decision. You would think after a while he would consider things more thoroughly before acting.
His twitpic page is still there, probably didn't delete it cause it was never a problem, or he forgot.
A mere two hours later he posts a blog about the Avalanche injury situation and at the bottom of the post he has this to say: "Oh, and thanks for the supportive emails about the twitter cancellation thing. Maybe I’ll rethink it and start it up again, but as of now it’s still dead to me."
Okaaay...Dater has employed this sort of PR manipulation before. Like I said, I think he is a pretty compulsive guy, so whether it is intentional or not I do not know.
Just a month ago he said he would quit Twitter if he didn't get 1,000 followers within the next couple days, starting a minor war with some single-celled Red Wings fan. He later said it was all a joke, tweeted in sarcasm. You can Red Wing fan's version of things here. But I warn you, it may endanger your Avalanche soul to click that link.
Nonetheless, Dater got his 1,000 followers despite pissing off a lot of people and taking a lot of criticism.
I have every reason think he will be back. We all know that nothing on the Internets is REALLY ever deleted. I would bet he can un-delete his account, get all his followers back and stir up yet another circus in the process. Once again Twitter would no doubt be buzzing about him changing his mind, and no doubt a lot of his followers will un-follow. But when the dust settles he will probably end up gaining more than he loses.
As you can see from the screen capture below, he is still out there in the Internets, floating around...nothing works when you click on it...but...just wait.



-From the Point
*UPDATE - Nov 24th and Dater is back on Twitter. He came roaring out of the gate with "I tweet, therefore I am" He owes Terry Frei a beer and a lot of followers an apology. He is on a different acount name, so he is starting over on the followers, but he's up to ~50 so far. He is taking some heat on Twitter but overall it's fairly quiet. Correction, that only lasted a couple hours before he got his old account restored, followers and all! And yes, that includes me. It's not just the tweets that a blog post is up or a new article. It's simple stuff like, "Hannan is on the ice, no Foote." That gives us hardcore fans that extra little bit of info that only Dater is willing to take the time to do.

2 comments:

  1. The only reason I followed him was for the breaking news, especially to find out who was starting in net every night, but to be honest, his negativity towards the team or particular players really bothered me. Seems like he never had much good to say about anyone. I know he's paid to write about the team and not necessarily be a fan, but his complaints really got to me after a while. After all, he is part of the media and we all know their expertise lies in pointing out the negative in what they report about. That's much easier, and tends to get more attention, than the positives in sports and in life. I just wish we, as fans, could have learned more from him about the Avs and hockey through Twitter. He's been gone for two games now, and I don't miss him at all. I can get the breaking news I need from his blog.

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  2. I know what you mean about the negativity, I think it was often some sort of over-compensation at trying to be "objective" about the team. He has often admitted that it is hard to cover these guys for years and not get attached to some of them.
    As for the breaking news and even blog posts, I just found a different twitter feed that will give us that, yeah! Here it is: http://twitter.com/avsnews

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