Chad Ochocinco is a wide receiver for the Cincinatti Bengals who has taken up social media tools in general. He has a consistent presence on Ustream where he interacts with fans in a way that would make any social media consultant proud- it’s a real conversation. After watching pieces of a few episodes, it was obvious that he truly enjoys the ineraction and that he was not only answering questions from viewers but actually interacting with them as part of the show.

And then there is twitter! Ochocinco (@ochoNFLcinco85) is doing the same kind of interaction on Twitter with fans, and has some envelope-pushing ideas for his games. Basically, the NFL has banned the use of cell phones or twitter during a football game. Ochocinco’s idea is to come up with some hand signals and fly a different fan out each week to sit in the stands, watch the game, and tweet for him as he does the hand signals. Wow. The idea being, Ochocinco scores a touchdown and he gives the “swoop/high-five/whatever” signals and it will be translated into a tweet by his resident tweeter. He plans to have a contest through his Ustream account and the winners of each contest will be flown out to be his celebrity twitter representative in the stands.

Innovative. It will be interesting to see what the NFL think of this- if it will be tolerated or if there will be some kind of investigation or a specific finger-wagging no to Ochocinco. There are always naysayers to the newest trends- and this may well be a good example. Why shouldn’t there be twittering during a football game? That would be amazing. They have already innovated with radios, and they communicate sideline to field with hand signals- and there are head-cams and countless other media tricks. Why should twitter be ruled out?

We’ll see- it could be cause for much debate, which probably means Ochocinco is way ahead of his time, ready to embrace twitter and social media well before the national organization he works for does. Does that sound familiar to anyone?

Celebrity Twitter User Chad Ochocinco Innovates with Social Media Tools

Scott