As you guys and gals know, I love me some Twitter. It's one of the best inventions since white sliced bread as far as I'm concerned. With twitter you can read folks thoughts and interact with your fave celebs/ athletes, while getting the latest breaking news, all rolled in one.

But with the growing popularity of Twitter, comes the Twitter haters. There are some that have taken certain steps to show that they don't like the intimate tweets made regarding... anything.

Case in point #1- Antonio Cromartie Fined


The Chargers CB was recently fined $2500 for tweeting about "nasty food" at the Chargers facility during training camp.


Come on now..... How many times have you had a potluck or even have a cafeteria at work and came across some food that was down right disgusting??? When you talk to your friends at the end of the day, you say to them, "Man... today I had some food that was nasty as hell..." and continue to tell the story. What Cromartie did was no different. He was speaking his mind.

Now, I follow Cromartie (click here to add him to your follow list), and he doesn't say off the wall things often, so you know he's upset at this point. Hell, I know I would. Because of his fine, last night Cromartie tweeted this after a practice:

"man we had a grt practice 2day The defense flow around we made a lot of plays every1 knows I have 2 watch wht i say now cause i got fined"

LOL dude is scared as hell to say anything related to his job. He probably can't fart and tweet about it without being fined. First the NFL cracked down on tweeting during games (which I can understand. If I'm a coach or an owner, you get paid to play, everything else comes after your play on the field), now this?!

Case in point #2- ESPN's Tweeting Restrictions


So ESPN has added restrictions on what their personalities can and cannot tweet about. Hmmmmm.... To see the new guidelines, click here. So from here on out, if you follow an ESPN analyst, such as Chris Mortensen, you'll get minimal info and probably get teasers leading you to a link to their website to get the story in its entirety.

For both situations, this is some bull hockey, if I ever saw any. Twitter is a great marketing tool that allows you to gain a new fan base, so that they will actually go to the website you write for, or support the team the athlete plays for. For whatever reason, the NFL and ESPN sees Twitter as a threat, and to a point, I can understand. From a league standpoint, the thought of players "airing out dirty laundry" isn't appealing to them. And from a media standpoint, giving away too much info on Twitter when we want the traffic on our website is bad business. But this is too much. Writers and players are being held in Twitter jail, because it's been seen as a threat and not an ally.

If anything, Twitter should be your friend, not the enemy. Gaining new fans should make anyone happy. New viewers is potential $$$ so why it is looked down upon is beyond me. It's another form of media.

News flash to the NFL and ESPN, it's 2009. Get with the times. Twitter isn't going anywhere for a while, so it's time join modern day media. Stop this foolishness before you can't turn back.