SEC rethinks ban on social media

You're at a South Carolina football game, sitting in the sun at Williams-Brice Stadium. USC scores, and as the fans go wild, you tweet to your buddies, "Touchdown, Gamecocks!"

Oops, there's a flag on that play. All social networking at games is against SEC rules. Gamecocks can't tweet. That's not allowed.

The giant booing sound you hear is SEC fans across the Internet reacting to what some say is college sports' most restrictive social media policy. Way to tweet your protest, fans. Thanks to the reaction on blogs, Twitter and elsewhere, that policy is about to be revised, the SEC told me this afternoon.

"I know what's being written," said Charles Bloom, the conference spokesman, about an outcry online by the media and fans. "The thought process is to get it loosened up a bit." Bloom expects a revision to be finished in a day or two.

The SEC is trying to protect its $3 billion contract with CBS and ESPN, which has video rights to its sporting events. A restriction on fans posting videos is "tougher to move," Bloom told me. "The main concern is videos." That part is staying put, it appears.

So, can fans post photos to Twitter and Facebook from the games? That remains to be seen, he said. Bloom indicated that fans would probably be able to tweet from the stands. But he confirmed that, right now, strictly speaking, that is forbidden. "I'm advocating that we loosen that part up," Bloom said.

According to the policy, ticketed fans can't "produce or disseminate (or aid in producing or disseminating) any material or information about the Event, including, but not limited to, any account, description, picture, video, audio, reproduction or other information."

The question is, why was the policy so restrictive in the first place? The Big 10 has a far more open social media policy that seems to embrace different formats and invites fans to take part. Here's more on the SEC controversy.

If you haven't seen the video above, of a guy who marches to the beat of his own drummer, check it out. Go your own way, and you never know what will happen.

In the past 24 hours, six of my friends on Facebook have posted about health care. That's not comments to an existing thread, but unique posts. I did a test this morning, searching Facebook and Twitter to see how many users were posting about health care. From all users, there were eight unique wall posts in one minute on Facebook regarding health care. (That didn't include comments or messages. These were new wall posts by users.) In one minute there were 20 Tweets mentioning health care. To put that in perspective, it took 45 minutes for eight people to post on Facebook about "Mad Men," the wildly popular cable show that had a season premiere the night before. But are all these posts constructive dialogue? Or just blasting?

In case you somehow missed it, this squirrel photo is a sensation online. He took a curious peek at the camera, and became a star of a Minnesota couple's vacation photo. Jackson and Melissa Brandts were on the "Today" show this morning, insisting that the photo is real.

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