Athletes turn to Twitter to get their message out

When his fourth child, son Max, was born two weeks ago, his followers on Twitter knew it almost instantly.

Not long ago, David Stern, the longtime NBA commissioner, took on a serious pose in front of a group of sports editors in New York.

"Our goal has been to be wherever our fans are, and our fans are being amassed in different areas," he said. "We're the biggest tweet league -- but not as big as Shaq."

NBA: 735,485 followers.

Shaq: 1,295,250.

It's not only that athletes and coaches and team owners have latched on to Twitter. It's what they're saying that offers a window into how they think.

Tennis player Andy Roddick is into Twitter. He posted, "rumor is that they are thinking of putting the super bowl in london? are u kidding me? whats next? eurocup in detroit? ridiculous."

Funny stuff. Roddick has a sense of humor and a sense of the ridiculous and he pays attention to the world outside a tennis court.

Olympic swimmer Dara Torres tweets. "Sitn in car eatn frozen yogurt w/ m&m's and peanut butter chips (kinda defeats purpose of froyo!) b/4 my appearance at Borders in Dallas."

Torres has been on a book tour and it's kind of cool to know a world-class athlete will eat junk food like the rest of us on occasion.

But she isn't tweeting for fun.

"My sponsors asked me to get on Twitter," Torres said.

"Really, does anyone care what I do?"

Plenty of people seem to care that Shaq "just had a bowl of heart to heart kashi cereal, not bad, on my way bak to shaq 24 hour fitness, 8 pack here I come."

USC football Coach Pete Carroll is an avid user of Twitter, sharing such thoughts as his song of the day -- on Wednesday it was Randy Newman's "I Love L.A." in honor of the Lakers -- and using his Twitter page as a recruiting tool. Ben Malcolmson of the official USC sports The Ripsit Blog, who has helped Carroll become a Twitterer and who writes some of the coach's tweets, said the audience was "fans, friends -- and recruits." When Carroll announces he is going to the beach in February, that might sound cool to a high school recruit in Pennsylvania.

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is another Twitter fan, and his tweets are mostly filled with substance and immediate and emotional reactions -- and almost always worth reading.

He said via e-mail -- his favorite way of answering media questions -- that O'Neal and Armstrong have earned such strong followings "because they are very inclusive in their tweets. As new people came on, they benefited from the curiosity factor and were able to retain people's interest."