Two-years ago Richard Loat didn’t understand what Twitter was “all about”. Hastags, re-tweets, SMS, trending topics, he just didn’t “get it.”

Today, Loat, a student at Simon Fraser University,  has eight Twitter accounts and is partly paying for his education as a social media consultant.

Seven accounts are run by Loat for various businesses and and business people who look to him to share his social media expertise.

Only one is Loat’s personal account and he uses it to tweet about his passion: hockey.

His Blackberry hums and buzzes constantly and over 3,600 followers of Mozy19, Loat’s hockey Twitter name, anxiously await Vancouver Canucks updates.

Loat has effectively transitioned from a news consumer to a news producer, but he does not consider himself a journalist.

Instead, he views Web 2.0 technologies as a way to become more involved with other fans and the sport he loves. He has branded himself as a professional hockey fan. For Loat, tweeting and staying connected is a full-time job.

“For me it always just been taking a passion for hockey and being able to share it with a lot of people,” said Loat.

He first got the idea to join Twitter from Miss604 (Rebecca Bollwitt), another popular Vancouverite on social media.

At a Canucks’ game, he was part of a group of live-bloggers who posted game updates from the concourse area. It was here that Bollwitt, who had been using Twitter for over seven months, suggested Loat join Twitter.

Joining Twitter Nation

Loat signed up for an account, despite not understanding the mechanics of Twitter.

“After muddling my around and learning how I could make it useful for me, It just sort of took off from there,” he said.

Loat’s journey from everyday fan to Canucks fan expert, began by simply setting up a tweet column, using hastags, to filter and search only for tweets about the Vancouver Canucks (#Canucks).

Hastags (#) are ways users can highlight a topic in their tweets. Other users looking to add to conversation threads can use or search for topics by using the number-sign (#).

By searching for tweets about the Canucks using a hashtag, Loat was able to create a feed of live updates from anyone and everyone who had hastagged Canucks as a topic.

He re-tweeted and replied to as many Canucks tweets as possible, connecting with as many fans as he could, exchanging opinions, sparking arguments and sharing a passion for all things Canucks.

“I would reply to anyone that had an opinion about the Canucks, because I wanted to start that conversation,” said Loat.

“Just fostering that two-way dialogue, which other people saw, and other people hopped in, and all the sudden you build this network of people that come to you or want to talk to you about Canucks stuff.”

Branding the tweet

Loat decided he needed to use Twitter as form of personal branding once he started to become popular with his following.

It’s really easy to get carried away and just tweet all the time about everything and engage with people.Personal branding involves focussing an online identity around one theme or representation and building an image around a specific brand in order to showcase yourself.

Choosing a theme or niche of expertise allows an individual to tap into a specific market of people or interest group, and share information with them.

Loat  focussed on tweeting about sports, and more specifically the Canucks. He stopped typing personal tweets and only posted comments related to the hockey team.

Gone were the days when Loat used his 140 characters to tell people he was eating a great lunch at Kirk McLean’s Deli.

Now, he tell his followers he was eating a great lunch at Kirk McLean’s Deli, and there was an awesome picture of when McLean used to play for the Canucks.

McLean is a famous Canucks goaltender from the 1990s.

“It’s really easy to get carried away and just tweet all the time about everything and engage with people.” said Loat.

“In my mind it just reaches this critical point where people start to associate you with that personal brand you build. My personal brand was around being a Canucks blogger, and a Canucks tweeter.”

Loat recalls when he first noticed his tweeting was growing into something bigger than just a hobby.

He wasn’t just sharing opinions and creating dialogue with other fans anymore. People were seeking out Mozy19 for information about the Canucks and they began to view him as an insider.

“People value what you say,” said Loat. “It was the point where people started coming to me and asking me questions about the team as if I was some sort of authority, when really I’m just a big fan.”

He chose to filter out his personal tweets and focus everything on the Canucks. His followers were following him for Canucks information, not personal information. Loat had branded himself as a Canucks tweeter and caters to the team’s fan following.

“It gives people a resource. A lot of people aren’t interested in my personal life, and I don’t want them to be,” said Loat.  “No body cares if I am going out to have All-You-Can-Eat sushi, or going here or there.

“It’s 99 per cent Canucks information It’s all about the games, injuries, trades, opinions. I’ve created myself as a place to come for Canucks information.”

A professional tweeter?

Loat’s tweeting career took off. It wasn’t something he was paid it do, but it was something his following relied on him for.

If he missed a game, or stopped tweeting for a day his followers would tweet to him, “Where are you?,” “Where is Mozy19?,” “Why aren’t you tweeting?”

“It times like that, you realize people actually care about what I have to say,” said Loat about feeling an obligation to tweet to his followers.

Canucks fans use Twitter as a means to sharing their love of hockey and the team with other user who share the same passion. Users create networked communities.

These communities only exists in cyberspace, and their creation is facilitated by Web 2.0 technologies, like Twitter, which allows for individuals to groups together, beyond time and geographical boundaries.

When Loat takes a day off tweeting, the followers within his networked community notice. He is expected to show up online for games, just like a friend would notice if another friend didn’t show up to watch the big game at the pub.

He doesn’t feel like his tweets are headed towards anymore more professional. He likes to keep things light and make jokes, which differs from sports journalists who are expected to be objective and balanced.

However, Loat does see an irony between tweeters and journalists.

“The mainstream have criticized us for so long and now they’re blogging and tweeting and doing everything that they chastise us for,” he said.

“I know that there was that tension for a long time and now that they’ve [journalists] entered our space it seems hypocritical to a degree because we were never allowed to enter their space.”

The tension Loat is describing is based on established journalistic practices which are hinged on professional training, access and press credentials in order to report on a team.

Twitter, and Web 2.0 technologies, challenge these journalistic norms and practices because a tweeter or blogger does not have to have any training at all to voice their opinions or do team reporting.

Journalists have long held to the belief good reporting comes from good training and good training teaches journalists how to be balanced, fair, accurate and apply journalistic values.

Now, journalists are turning to Web 2.0 technologies to enrich their craft and reach audiences, and fans who tweet and blog must share their space.

Leveling the playing field: fans vs. journalists

It’s been debated whether or not bloggers are allowed to get press credentials. In the United States bloggers can sit in press boxes but in Canada bloggers can’t.

There are many online bloggers and tweeters who write at same level as professional journalists. They just aren’t considered professional journalists. Fans write as a hobby, while journalists write as a career.

It’s those instant updates that everyone craves because we’ve become an information society.Journalists “pay their dues” to becomes journalists, said Loat. They go to journalism school whereas fans are people who “sit in their basements” and practice a hobby which he said is sometimes seen as “on-par with what journalists do.”

Fans also have more room to be flexible and voice personal opinions. Bloggers and tweeter will be held accountable by their networked community and followers.

Journalists must tread more carefully because what they write is infused with their credibility and professional reputation.

“Their space is that mainstream media world with press passes where they don’t want see us allowed,” said Loat, who can understand why professional journalists may hold this view.

In Canada, there have been some regulations put in place by teams to ban bloggers from press boxes.

“Our space was always the online world, which they [journalists] never really wanted to get into, but now you see mainstream media, they’re all on Twitter. They all have blogs on top of their columns.

“Because there’s become this realtime need for information, they’ve come into our space,” said Loat. “They chastised us for so long about what we did, and now, to reach our demographics, journalists are doing the same things we do.”

He admits he harbours a little animosity towards the “Our-Space-Their-Space” debate, but he likes to keep it to one side and just focus on tweeting and hockey.

Twitter as a hot commodity

Loat, as well as millions of other users, understand why social networks like Twitter are so attractive: they allow users to connect with one another from anywhere, at any time from any place.

“It completely obliterates this concept of space and time so that you can connect with people who care about the same stuff,” he said.

Loat recalls when a man from Sweden found him on Twitter. The man tweeted with him about how he coached the Sedin twins when they were young kids.

Henrik and Daniel Sedin are two of the Canucks most talented and popular forwards. The brothers have played with the Canucks their entire careers, since 1997, with Henrik captaining the team beginning in 2010.

Loat finds it fascinating that he can connect with a former coach of the Sedins, who lives in Sweden, and chat about hockey in Vancouver.

“He jokes about how he was responsible for laying the foundations for the success in the Sedins’ careers and got them to where they are now,” he said laughing.

He also tweets with people who say up at night in the United Kingdom to listen to games online or watch via satellite.

Twitter also provides invaluable “real-time” information, said Loat. People can get instant updates, from around the world within seconds of something happening.

The value of information being shared on Twitter is not only attractive to users consuming tidbits of news, but to journalists who are looking for leads to their stories.

“If you look at the Canucks reporters on Twitter, there’s almost a bit of a battle to see who can tweet it first,” he said. “The first person that tweets it, everyone else re-tweets that.”

Retweeting is when one user forwards what another user has said to their own followers. Depending on the length of the tweet the user can add to or modify the tweet.

“It’s those instant updates that everyone craves because we’ve become an information society, “ added Loat.

Connecting with the Canucks

Hockey fans are information addicts when it comes to supporting their teams.

Although fans will feast on any piece of information given to them from other fans or from journalists, they crave the feeling of being an insider and getting information from the source.

“I like athletes on Twitter,” said Loat. “It allows them to bridge that gap between the player and the fan.

“We often put athletes on pedestals, but at the end of the day, they’re a lot like you or I. They do the same things. They go to similar places. They have the same needs, wants. They just have a bigger paycheck.”

Twitter can play a large role in fan identification, said Loat. In an organization with a fan base as massive as the Vancouver Canucks, connecting with fans and singling them out can be extremely valuable to a team.

“By being able to identify with fan the team is building their brand and their engagement with the fan, which is not only key to selling tickets, but it is the key to their bottom line.”

From a fan perspective, staying connected through Twitter, means being able to be a part of “Canucks Nation” whether they are in Australia or inside Rogers Arena.

It is chance for fans to feel a sense of closeness to the team, unparalleled by any other media or fan engagement prior to social networks.

Loat also said its interesting to see what the players think, through their tweets, in their own words, instead of only hearing a media perspective.

Following players on Twitter allows fans to hear facts and opinions they would have never hear otherwise.

User names and faces: “tweet-ups”

The fan experience Twitter fosters allows people to rally around a common idea or goal. For Loat, the goal is to support the Canucks, but what he really enjoys is the camaraderie shared between the fans.

“There are fans that I’ve met through fan tweet-up, that I would never have ever have met otherwise,” he said.

A tweet-up is when groups who meet on Twitter arrange a time and a place to meet-up, in person and put a face to username.

Loat said he has made friends through Twitter who are closer to him then friends he went to high school with.

Twitter allows different people to share common interests. It removes the need for an icebreaker, he said, because when users meet it’s like they’ve known each other forever.

“As a social networking tool, I think Twitter’s potential, just from my personal experience,  is endless,” said Loat who has been helped personally and professionally by being a user.

He has even used Twitter to start his own hockey-themed charity, Five Hole for Food.

The namer refers to scoring a goal by shooting the puck between a goalie’s legs, and it raises money and donations for Canadian food banks.

The charity event begins in the summer when he and a friend organize road hockey games in cities across Canada. Loat drives across the country stopping in each city to play hockey with other fans, raising money and collecting food for the local food bank.

“I reached out to this network of bloggers I’d made friend with over a time, through the Canucks,” he said. He then contacted these bloggers and invited them all to play a game a road hockey as he was driving through each of their individual cities.

Five Hole for Food was an instant success, and it all started with a networked community of hockey fans.

Loat has met followers who genuinely appreciate what he does through his charity work and tweet-up.

It gives him a sense of pride when someone comes up to him or tells him when they are at work or can’t watch the game, they look to Mozy19 to provide instant updates.

Loat also receives messages from people saying they appreciate tweeting with him because their husbands or boyfriends or other friends don’t like hockey.

“The cool thing about Twitter in particular, is that Facebook is lumped into this umbrella or bucket of social media,” said Loat. “I feel Twitter actually makes social media social and it actually encourages you to meet the people you’re talking to.”

Twitter’s game plan

For Loat, Twitter’s potential is endless. It allows individuals to brand themselves, personalize who they are in a digital environment and create communities.

He believes Twitter users join for different reasons. Some users will be more personal, others more private, but as far as Mozy19 is concerned it’s strictly Canucks.

“If I am dying to tweet about it, I will find a way to relate it back to the Canucks,” said Loat. “My Twitter account is a Canucks Twitter account.”

His other seven accounts are managed by him professionally. What started out as a fan hobby has become something of a career.

“I am social media consultant,” he said when asked he does for a living. He is self-taught and, like his love of hockey, Loat has a passion for social media and Web 2.0 technologies.

Some have even labelled him as a “social media guru,” said Loat. “Social media is what you make of it.

“It’s a balance of work and play and hobbies and professional interests and I just manage to fit them all into the 24-hours in a day.”