There is nevertheless an outstanding buzz that surrounds social networking and the most current factor to hit the social network is the introduction of direct communication from celebrities and sports athletes. The rich and famous now take to their Twitter to ‘tweet’ out against the press with stories that have been written about them and to confirm or deny the latest gossip. It is the same for the sports social network planet. One particular excellent example would be Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, as he has one of the most common Facebook Fan Pages in the world.

Liga Mexico utilizes his fan pages on Facebook as an on the net diary, as a forum to communicate with his millions of fans. He talks about his private experiences, shares videos of himself and uploads images of himself and pictures of sponsorships he is involved with. Not too long ago, when controversy struck Phelps and he created the headlines, he took to his Facebook to apologize to his fans.

It just shows how this new social network generation wants to be able to communicate with their sporting heroes, some thing that was in no way possible in the past. The sports social network also presents a new genuine time kind of communication that can react more quickly than the press. If a piece of real time news appears on someone’s Twitter or other sports social network then it can speedily spread across the online just before the press has even discovered out.

Not only sports news, but not too long ago the personal news of sports personalities has also been appearing, straight from the character themselves. Not so long ago Lance Armstrong informed his million fans worldwide that his girlfriend had offered birth to their son, Max. The proud father then went on to show off pictures of his newborn and all this has been created doable with social networking.

Even though online social networking is only in its infancy, it is simple to see how rapidly it has adapted and how a sports social network can now bypass the media completely and enable for sport athletes to communicate straight to their fans in a way they want to.

Shaquille O’Neal a player for Cleveland Cavaliers is also one more athlete who is not shy to sport social network websites. With more than two million followers on Twitter, this sport celebrity speaks daily about his thoughts on news in the sport world. A handful of months ago he even shared his thoughts with the online world with regards to an NBA trade and even answered concerns straight to his fans.

General it is interesting to see exactly where social networking technologies will end up taking us, specifically within the sports industry. For now it delivers a fascinating window into the personal lives of our celebrity -obsessed culture and shows no signs of slowing down just yet.