The MLB Twitter account has received a lot of attention, mostly negative, due to their lame puns, RT begging, and so on and so forth. But today, their ineptitude may have taken the cake.

MLB has made their account private, and it will remain private from noon to 6 PM eastern, so they can give away prizes.

People generally make their accounts private so that they can avoid random people from looking at their tweets and only let approved people look at them… not so you can give away "exclusive prizes." This is supposed to be a professional account covering a league. What if a major piece of news happens, like a star player breaking his leg and getting hurt? Is MLB going to ignore the news so they can continue to give away tickets and giftcards? And if they don't ignore it, are they going to turn their account public again so people can retweet the news at will?

And here's another really irritating thing about this private nonsense: there are two weeks left in the season, and baseball is in the midst of an intense pennant race. In addition to the ten current playoff teams, there are no less than seven clubs within five games of a playoff berth. You'd think there would be more attention focused on the games on the field as opposed to giving away prizes for no reason. There are also seven games starting during the "private hours" with six of those seven games featuring potential playoff teams. No updates on those games during private hours? That's cool.

Social media really isn't too complicated to master… yet, MLB seems to find new ways to screw things up. Is "PRIVATE" in big red letters something you ever want to see on social media from a pro sports league?  While winning prizes is never a bad thing, why is MLB shutting down their entire Twitter operation to the outside world? It's against the mission of social media. You know when a good time to do this would be? The day after the All-Star Game. Or, a day in the middle of the playoffs where no games are going on. Or, during Spring Training. Not in the heat of a pennant race where there are a plethora of meaningful games going on.

About Joe Lucia

I hate your favorite team. I also sort of hate most of my favorite teams.

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