Live football commentary on Twitter: A call to arms

At the beginning of the football season I set up a Twitter account called Pressffive. The idea was to bring live text updates (live blogging if you like) into the Twitterverse.

For those who do not know, there are any number of live match commentaries by sports website designed to describe the action unfolding at a football match. Anyone stuck at work or otherwise unable to watch a game can follow the action minute-by-minute. Basically someone watches the game and types up whats going on into a CMS which is posted on to dynamically updating or static web page. Leading exponents of this are The Guardian (clever and funny) and the BBC (efficient). It also works brilliantly for Cricket.

To be frank you don't need to be a hot-shot social networking guru to work out that this sort of service would be ideal on Twitter. In fact it would work better as the commentary just becomes part of your Twitter stream rather than having to stare at a browser waiting for it to update. So if you are at work, you could actually get some work done. Or if you didn't fancy that then you can get involved with the commentary yourself in the way that Twitter allows you to do. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Twitter allows you to share a common experience as though you were all sat on a sofa watching the game together. What's more at 140 characters its cuts down on the bullshit.

Anyway so I gave it a try and it was reasonably well received. The first game was a Champions League qualifier featuring Liverpool. It was difficult at first to describe what was going on and keep things pithy and interesting but I thought it worked really well. I even got a request to do a Premier League game later than month. Unfortunately, that's where I ran into trouble.

I'm not wireless. I don't got no laptop and my desk top is upstairs while my Cable box is downstairs. Now I realise that there are ways of watching football on the 'Net through various unlicensed means but whenever I've tried that the quality is appalling. I tried working with live streaming with some Serie A games on Bet 365 but it was crap (and I didn't get much of a response).

That's not my only problem. I work late shifts and one week in two I'm still on my way home from work during mid week games. So even if and when I do go wireless, I still won't be able to provide the regular service that this sort of thing really needs in order for it to catch on. @chrisoakley and I discussed doing something similar for @SPAOTP on 3rd round day however a regular service looks unlikely for the foreseeable.

However, that shouldn't stop anyone else from giving it a go. Let's face it, sooner or later one of the mainstream media will get hold of the idea which, if it falls into the wrong hands, could be really dry and stultified. Something like this needs to start in the Twitterverse by the Twitterverse, not by some noob corporate type who thinks it will be a great idea to intersperse every third tweet with an advert.

There aren't too many football bloggers on Twitter that I can find and there isn't much of a football constituency either. There soon will be though so for any early adopters reading this, maaaaybe they should give it some thought. Perhaps in some sort of joint venture. I'd be the first to follow. Of course, if I can help out at at any time...?