MSU Athletics On Facebook
7/30/2009 12:00:00 AM | General
July 30, 2009
EAST LANSING, Mich. - As Michigan State prepares for the 2009-10 competition season, the MSU Athletics Department has enhanced the coverage of Spartan teams with the development of the official Facebook page. Spartan followers with a Facebook account can become a "fan" of the Michigan State Spartans and receive regular updates, including photos, video and exclusive content by logging onto facebook.com/MSUathletics.
"We are excited that our loyal Spartan fans can now follow us on Facebook," said Matt Larson, MSU associate director of athletic communications. "The mission statement for our athletics department says that we `engage our community...' Facebook provides a great vehicle through which we can engage our fan base, especially current MSU students and young alumni, many of which access Facebook on a daily basis.
"For some, this site will become a primary source of their Spartan information. For others, the site will supplement the already thorough coverage provided through more traditional outlets including MSUSpartans.com."
The site also allows the athletics department an avenue through which to interact with its fan base and receive feedback, along with conducting polls, contests and offering exclusive promotional opportunities.
Michigan State is already utilizing social networking tools with its Twitter accounts, including a general athletics page (twitter.com/msu_athletics) as well as pages for football (twitter.com/msu_football), men's basketball (twitter.com/msu_basketball) and hockey (twitter.com/msu_hockey).
Founded in February 2004, Facebook is a free social utility that helps people communicate with friends and family. It features 250 million active users, more than 120 million of which log on to Facebook at least once each day. According to a recent Nielsen study, the average U.S. user spent 4.5 hours per month on Facebook in June, more time than was spent on Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL.