This is what Twitter does to us; it makes us crave the next amazing thing just after we've consumed the last one. Any pause to absorb unfolding events offers a chance for observers to turn away

Catching up on reading this morning and found this on NPR. I mentioned to my graduate marketing class last night how much fun I had consuming the Grammys while simultaneously interacting on Twitter and Facebook. I had not watched the Grammys in years, but found myself strangely attached to it, even after Springsteen's opening performance (which was the REAL reason I turned on the awards show in the first place).

Ann Powers hits the nail on the head with this pull quote, which comes at the end of her post. And by doing so, she perfectly summarizes why the same can't be achieved with sports.

"Any pause to absorb unfolding events offers a chance for observers to turn away"... sports is filled with pauses. Basketball and football have deliberately created pauses (think media timeouts and 2-minute warnings). Baseball is almost a 3-hour pause.

"It makes us crave the next amazing thing just after we've consumed the last one"... How great would it have been for the NBA if Jeremy Lin's clutch 3-pointer last night was followed by 10 more minutes of playing? Or if Austin Rivers 3-point buzzer beater against UNC last week was merely a lead in to another 30 minutes of basketball?

It is too easy to turn off a sporting event following an "amazing thing". The Grammys, as Powers, points out, did not allow us to shut off the show. Sporting events won't change, and therefore, it will be difficult to achieve this level of social media engagement despite the interesting graphic this week from @GMRMarketing which indicates 83% of sports fans will "check" social media while watching a game on TV. Checking and interacting are two dramatically different levels of engagement.

Your thoughts?