Patriots All Access - fake twitter questions?

[I am party]

Patriots All Access 9-12-2014 - link (skip to around 18:20)

@RobertA
https://twitter.com/RobertA
no tweets

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Patriots All Access 9-19-2014 - link (skip to around 20:10)

@Julia83
https://twitter.com/Julia83
protected tweets, location is listed as Wales

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Patriots All Access 9-26-2014 - link (skip to around 21:45)

@etm0311
https://twitter.com/etm0311
only one tweet, and it's a spam tweet

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Patriots All Access 10-3-2014 - link (skip to around 19:30)

@jedj13
https://twitter.com/jedj13
no tweets

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Patriots All Access 10-10-2014 - link (skip to around 20:10)

@janetm32
https://twitter.com/janetm32
account suspended, but a few weeks ago when I checked I'm pretty sure it was a spam account

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Patriots All Access 10-15-2014 - link (skip to around 19:55)

@sal19831
https://twitter.com/sal19831
no tweets

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Patriots All Access 10-24-2014 - link (skip to around 19:15)

@bettes
https://twitter.com/bettes
hasn't tweeted since March 2013, located in Chicago, doesn't seem to be a football fan, much less a Patriots fan

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Patriots All Access 10-31-2014 - link (skip to around 18:00)

@andym65
https://twitter.com/andym65
Seems to be in the UK, likely not even a fan of American football.

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Patriots All Access 11-7-2014 - link (skip to around 8:15)

@RonM173
https://twitter.com/RonM173
Page doesn't exist

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Patriots All Access 11-14-2014 - link (skip to around 18:50)

@barbg192
https://twitter.com/barbg192
Page doesn't exist!

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(No twitter question on Patriots All Access 11-21-2014)

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Patriots All Access 11-28-2014 - link (skip to around 20:20)

@ChrisS1958
https://twitter.com/ChrisS1958
Page doesn't exist

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Not really a big deal I guess...just wondering how they come up with these twitter handles. They aren't a completely random jumble of letters, since on the surface they look like actual twitter handles. Maybe they just pick a random name and append random numbers/letters to the end?

Also why can't they use real questions from real tweeters? Do not enough people tweet questions to @Patriots with hashtag #AskBB?

https://twitter.com/search?q=@patriots #askbb&src=typd

 

[farn]

Investigative reporting ! I'm loving it.

Station "Bill we need to ask you Twitter questions, you ok with that ?"

BB "I don't MyFace"

 

[lurker1965]

Not poo-pooing your research, just adding a possibility you may not have considered. Perhaps that person joined twitter just to send that message. For months I had one tweet (I think to John Rooke, stadium announcer). By now I might have like 10 - in two or so years.

 

[TBR]

Not poo-pooing your research, just adding a possibility you may not have considered. Perhaps that person joined twitter just to send that message. For months I had one tweet (I think to John Rooke, stadium announcer). By now I might have like 10 - in two or so years.

If you go to their profiles, you will see they never sent/asked a question to begin with

From what it looks like, they're just writing random twitter usernames and putting them at the end of the question to make it look like a fan asked.

 

[102 Pat]

Now the Patriots will be fined for this with a loss of next years first round pick

 

[Nikolai]

Yeah, on the surface, it looks like they're pulling fake questions out to softball in a talking point.

There is a small possibility that the twitter names are being obscured for some reason.

There is a possibility that they have actually given BB the responsibility of looking for a good question to answer, and he never does, so they have a bunch of canned ones with "fake" accounts in the pipe.

 

[patchick]

If you go to their profiles, you will see they never sent/asked a question to begin with

From what it looks like, they're just writing random twitter usernames and putting them at the end of the question to make it look like a fan asked.

Yep, and the username pattern FirstnameLastinitialStringofgibberish isn't plausible either. Seems unlikely that they're obscuring usernames to protect privacy, since public Twitter posts are fair game. Plus the posts just don't sound real. They're clearly faking it.

I actually sympathize with them. For the past couple of years I've run a modestly successful media feature based on reader questions, and I can tell you that READER QUESTIONS SUCK. 95% of them are unusable, and the 5% remaining tend to repeat each other.

But yet. Maybe I'm naive, but my response to the problem is to more aggressively solicit questions and be prepared to spend some time sorting the wheat from the chaff -- not to make crap up. I have never, ever printed a fake question, and IMO there's no excuse for an NFL team with vastly greater PR resources to do so. (They're missing an opportunity, too: when you use a fan's question, you create a loyal superfan.)

Maybe they're just being lazy. Or maybe the whole question-and-answer format is a sham, and they're creating fake questions to pair with answers in a preexisting interview? Either way, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it's the rule rather than the exception in fluff journalism.

 

[Nikolai]

Yep, and the username pattern FirstnameLastinitialStringofgibberish isn't plausible either. Seems unlikely that they're obscuring usernames to protect privacy, since public Twitter posts are fair game. Plus the posts just don't sound real. They're clearly faking it.

I actually sympathize with them. For the past couple of years I've run a modestly successful media feature based on reader questions, and I can tell you that READER QUESTIONS SUCK. 95% of them are unusable, and the 5% remaining tend to repeat each other.

But yet. Maybe I'm naive, but my response to the problem is to more aggressively solicit questions and be prepared to spend some time sorting the wheat from the chaff -- not to make crap up. I have never, ever printed a fake question, and IMO there's no excuse for an NFL team with vastly greater PR resources to do so. (They're missing an opportunity, too: when you use a fan's question, you create a loyal superfan.)

Maybe they're just being lazy. Or maybe the whole question-and-answer format is a sham, and they're creating fake questions to pair with answers in a preexisting interview? Either way, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it's the rule rather than the exception in fluff journalism.

I actually agree, which is why I qualified the "name obscuring" with being a "small possibility". I haven't messed overly much with social media, but I did do radio briefly back in the day and your response here pretty much jives with how that whole industry works when it comes to "interaction" with the public.

 

[RayClay]

I had a theory, but I didn't see @alisonlovesbrady there.

 

[Baboon]

Zolak and All access have struck me as sleaze-tv since I first saw Zolak's hair. No surprise they are faking fan questions. The names are probably owned by a pr firm so they can't be sued.

 

[dales804]

Maybe the Pats should cool it on Twitter a bit. First the whole racist thing and now making up fake questions? Who is running that marketing department?

Good research @I am party.