@Indians

Last season the Indians got with the times and embraced social marketing for the first time. Instead of punishing players for bypassing the press and talking directly to fans, they encouraged it. Over the last year many players have filtered through with some fading away and others showing their twitter excellence. Since I’ve yet to come across a comprehensive list of Indians twitter accounts, so I made one myself. This list includes every player within the Indians development system who has ever had an account and some relative information about them. The information provided should be useful when deciding if each player is worth following. Verified accounts have been checked by twitter.com to ensure these are the real athletes, but I am fairly sure of the accuracy of the rest as well. The language is the primary language tweeted.

Notes: 

1. Highest tweet per day average.

2. Indians player with the most followers (31,111).

3. Longest active Indians twitter account.

4. Has tweeted in the past, but has since deleted. Account is now inactive.

5. Newest Indian to twitter.

6. New account to replace his original @DHuff11.

7. Most total tweets.

8. Protected account. He’ll allow you to follow if you request, but keep it nice since he isn’t public yet.

9. Most followed minor leaguer.

10. Greatest mustache on twitter.

Along with the players, there are a few front office personnel and others involved with the team on twitter. Here are some of those accounts:

For those looking for the official twitter accounts of the different levels of the Indians organization, they can be found here:

For those wondering why some players have not been included in the lists above. Here is a list of inactive accounts (no tweets in 2012) and some that have been deleted:

The tale of Matt LaPorta is one that should be taken note of. He was originally on twitter before most of the team was and he quit before the Indians changed policies due to negative feedback. During the resurgance in 2011 when the entire “Bullpen Mafia” among others started tweeting, he reactivated his account. After a very short time the amount of negativity and death threats caused him to delete his account for good. Remember that these are real people who will possibly read everything that you send to them. It is like they gave you their personal cell phone number to send texts to all day. None of these athletes need to do this, it is for the fans enjoyment alone. If one person abuses this gift, they can be blocked individually, but if a large number of people do it, we will probably see the openness of these players disappear like the accounts of Nick Hagadone, Lonnie Chisenhall and LaPorta. If you don’t have something nice to say, then don’t @ mention someone. If Indians fans as a community can act like human beings then we all will be able to enjoy getting to know these players a little better.