As the Ottawa Senators team bus headed to the Verizon Center Thursday morning, Daniel Alfredsson leaned over to Marc Methot and said, “Start a rumour that I’m going to join Twitter. Let’s see what happens.”
So at approximately 10:20am, Methot tweeted: “Just heard a nasty little rumor…Alfie on twitter perhaps even today. Thoughts?”
Predictably, Methot’s Twitter account exploded with replies in the minutes that followed.
And let’s give Methot credit for breaking this story — because yes — Daniel Alfredsson will be on Twitter. In fact, the Sens captain told me he may even launch his account Thursday afternoon and his first tweet could happen after tonight’s game — provided the Senators win and clinch a playoff spot here in Washington.
I put my recording device away when I was chatting with the captain, so I don’t have any direct quotes to pass along, but I can confirm that Alfredsson changed his mind on Twitter in the past few days. He’s seen how Erik Karlsson has embraced it — racking up almost 30,000 followers since officially joining Twitter on Tuesday.
Alfredsson believes that Twitter can be a great tool for interacting with fans and thinks the benefits can outweigh the negatives if you handle it properly. Alfredsson also admitted that he’s venturing into the unknown world of Twitter because of his children.
His oldest son Hugo is 10 years old now and Alfredsson says his kids will be on things like Twitter and Facebook before too long. So he’s doing the responsible father thing and making sure he knows what dangers can lurk in the online world. And you can bet when @HugoAlfredsson launches his account, dad will be his first follower.
As for what Alfredsson’s Twitter handle will be, that is up in the air. Apparently @DanielAlfredsson11 is too long of a handle and isn’t allowed. And of course there are lots of fake accounts out there pretending to be Alfredsson, so trying to get those user names switched over to him could take a few days. For example @Alfredsson11 has more than 2,000 followers — even though the account has never tweeted and it’s clearly a fake.
It will be interesting to see if Alfredsson can match Karlsson’s pace of attracting so many followers in the first 72 hours of launching his account.
When I asked Karlsson about why he joined Twitter yesterday, he jokingly said “It’s something I wanted to do when I was 23 — and not 35 like you.”
I wonder what Karlsson thinks about 40-year-old Alfredsson joining Twitter.