Twitter may have opened up the hour-to-hour lives of sports stars like Shaquille O'Neal and Lance Armstrong for public consumption, but ESPN, the NFL and the U.S. Marines all see the social-networking site as a potential liability. Within the last week, those organizations all enacted measures to control and prohibit their employees' and soldiers' tweets, and consequences now range from watchful censorship to immediate dismissal.
"The hammer just came down, tweeps: ESPN memo prohibiting tweeting info unless it serves ESPN," the network's NBA analyst Ric Bucher wrote in a post from his personal Twitter account.
ESPN gave its employees 12 guidelines on Wednesday. As media outlet, it issued a statement affirming its belief in Twitter and other social media as useful tools, but the network officially does not want its anchors and correspondents speaking out of turn in unsanctioned places, and those who step out of line could find themselves in search of new employment.
"My guess is I can still tweet about my vacation/car shopping, etc.," Bucher wrote. "But the informal NBA talk is prob[ably] in jeopardy."
At least two NFL teams, meanwhile, want players' Twitter accounts taken out of commission altogether while they are at work. Both the Green Bay Packers and Miami Dolphins kicked off their training camps this year with stern warnings. Packers coach Mike McCarthy announced a maximum fine of $1,701 for players caught posting during team functions, and Miami's Tony Sparano reportedly wants his team's personal Twitter accounts offline all the time.
"[W]e can tweet during camp ... just not during team functions," Packers halfback Ryan Grant wrote on Twitter. "[I]t has to be on our off time."
Likewise, Sparano seems to have gotten his message across in Florida.
"I don't have an account," Dolphins nose tackle Jason Ferguson told The New York Times. "I was thinking about getting one until I got the information [from Sparano]."
In addition to addressing basic concerns about professionalism on the job, the restrictions likely aim to limit statements about injuries or internal team activities that could feed media speculation.
The U.S. Marines took the week's harshest measures, however, due at least in part to the high stakes involved with mission security. An outright one-year ban on Twitter and other social networking sites took effect on Monday for all of the military institution's networks.
"These internet sites in general are a proven haven for malicious actors and content and are particularly high risk due to information exposure, user generated content and targeting by adversaries," a Marine Corps order accompanying the new policy read, according to CNN.
Some MySpace and YouTube-based marketing and recruitment efforts may earn exemptions from the policy, but individual waivers will be issued on a case-by-case basis.
All three cases will impact how affected employees and soldiers live their online lives going forward, but the underlying implication is clear: Bosses, coaches and generals are all taking a vested in interested in the tweets of their underlings.