After the recent story about how social networking is making us increasingly anti-social and harming our health, we thought it was worth sharing a story of how quite the opposite is true.
CrunchGear brought the wonderful litte story to my attention, and here’s how it goes…
One twitterer (Sean) tells a friend of his (Jesse) how he’s following Shaquille O’Neal, the basketball legend, on Twitter. Jesse naturally doubts @THE_REAL_SHAQ is actually who he says he is, however after discovering via twitter that he’s sat in a diner nearby, the two decide to head on down.
Twenty minutes later they stroll into the restaurant to see Shaq sat in the corner booth by himself. They wander cooly past him on their way to the table, nod their head and say “hey”, but end up at their table and in their own words ”whispering back and forth like 12 year old girls at the 7th grade dance.”
After around 10 minutes or so of discussing whether they should head over to say hello, Sean spots a tweet from Shaq himself
“I feel twitterers around me, r there any twitterers in 5 n diner wit me, say something”
Still unsure, Sean and Jesse continued to debate (albeit in whispers) whether they should go and talk to him. Shaq must have overheard the conversation and interrupted:
“Yes, you should”
Without hesitation it seems, the pair went over and requested a couple of photos.
“Of course! Pull up a seat”
Shaq curiously reviewed the camera phone they were about to take the photo with, before pulling out his Google Phone to show off his tech.
A few minutes later the pair headed back to their booth, almost reluctantly as they got the impression the 7ft giant wanted to hang out a little more. His parting message:
“Make sure you put that on your web page”
They discovered later that Shaq was not only was a friendly fellow but a generous one too, ordering around $20 worth of food leaving his young waiter a $160 tip followed by a Sprite and paying $40 for it!
It is SO refreshing to see a global celebrity actually representing themselves on Twitter, into consumer tech as much as the rest of us, so open to connecting offline with his followers and above all: a genuinely nice guy at that.
After leaving the restaurant, Shaq tweeted:
“To all twitterers , if u c me n public come say hi, we r not the same we r from twitteronia, we connect”
Even with his head and bank balance far above ours, it appears he’s clearly grounded enough to hang with the rest of us and discuss tech. :)
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