Screenshots appear to show Matt Garza hate-tweeting Eric Sogard's wife on Twitter
This is weird.
During today's game, after Eric Sogard successfully executed a squeeze play to bring home an insurance run, Matt Garza was apparently angry, with a media member who was there saying that Garza called Sogard a "fucking pussy."
Then this evening, an account that purports to be Matt Garza's Twitter account was sending out some more Sogard hate. The account is protected, and is not verified, so it isn't definitive that this is his account...but at the same time, it is followed by Ken Rosenthal, Buster Olney, and Bob Nightengale, and has over 12K followers, so it appears to be the real deal.
Garza tweets to Kaycee Sogard, Eric Sogard's wife, "tell your wife to speak up so his wife doesn't have to do it for him," then goes on to say she needs to "give your husband his balls back."
Here's a screen cap of some of the tweets.
So, uh...that is unexpected.
Garza tweets were also in the news in April, when he criticized fake fans and excessive negativity from the Cubs' fan base.
Twitter controversy isn't new for the Rangers...last year, after a bad start, when someone hate tweeted Derek Holland, his account responded with "ur a fag." The tweet was deleted and he claimed he was "hacked."
It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
UPDATE -- Someone sent me this story from February, which quotes a Garza tweet from this same account in which he provides an update on his health.
The Yahooacquisitiontrainjustkeeps on rolling! Rockmelt, the social browsernews portal social content discovery service will be joining a growing cadre of properties that Marissa Mayer has snatched up. The platform, which seems to straddle the line between Pinterest and StumbleUpon, focuses on personalization and social networking as a way to highlight and serve up content it believes you'll want to read or watch. Yahoo, especially through its homepage portal, has always been about serving up content, and the expectation is that Rockmelt will help the company better hone its understanding of you and what you love. The announcement post makes it clear that Yahoo plans to actually integrate Rockmelt's technology with its existing platform, though, we're gonna have to wait a bit longer to see exactly what that marriage may look like. Rockmelt will shut down its existing apps and services on August 31st this year.
Foursquare, the location-based service, might be most known for its check-ins. But as its Explore search and discovery engine becomes more popular, the venue-specific tips its users leave behind for others using the app--where to find unbeatable burgers, what caf? has the tastiest soy lattes--are rapidly becoming one of the startup's most compelling assets.
The dataset is especially valuable for Foursquare not only because it gives the company insight into what locations are popular and why, but also because the number of user-generated tips on the service is growing at such a fast clip. Last month, Foursquare surpassed 33 million user-generated tips, up roughly 65% year-over-year. That means the number of tips added on Foursquare is growing at a faster rate than the number of reviews uploaded to Yelp, one of the startup's chief competitors. The numbers were shared as part of Fast Company's new profile of the startup's CEO and cofounder Dennis Crowley, which is set to go live early next week.
To be fair, the comparison of tips and reviews is a bit apples and oranges, some might say. Tips are bite-sized pieces of content that users leave behind on Foursquare like breadcrumbs. When a user "checks in" to, say, Umami Burger, he or she might leave a tip urging others to order the truffle fries--the digital equivalent of asking your friend for a dinner recommendation. The social and venue data are helping to make Foursquare's discovery engine more powerful.
Yelp's reviews, meanwhile, are almost notoriously more in depth, and range from being incredibly informative to downright snarky to hyperbolically comprehensive. They've even inspired entire memes and remain an incredibly valuable asset to the company, and represent one reason why revenue shot up 69% in Yelp's second quarter earnings, which were announced this week.
But because they are often so extensive, Yelp's reviews are traditionally written after the fact rather than during the moment--which is perhaps one of Foursquare's greatest advantages in this area. "It?s been our take that [long-form Yelp reviews] aren?t particularly valuable," says Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley. "It's better to have short, actionable bits of content that feel more similar to tweets because they are easier to consume on mobile. As a mobile-first company, you don?t want to read five paragraphs of a review."
Yelp declined to comment on the record about Foursquare for this article.
Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley
What's more, the tips on Foursquare are arguably easier for the startup to parse, enabling the company to call out popular venue features and embed them seamlessly in its search engine. They can range from highlighting the best bar cocktails to the best secret dance clubs to the fastest coffee shop Wi-Fi.
The mobile-centric platform also has its benefits. "It lowers the barrier: When everyone else has written two sentences, it?s easier for you to write two sentences, so we get a wider variety of reviews from people," Crowley says, "as opposed to that super passionate or super angry person that wanted to write three to four paragraphs. I?m glad we made the decision to have shorter snippets of content, which are more easily digestible." Only two years ago, Foursquare boasted just 7.5 million tips--a number that has since more than quadrupled. The company is now averaging more than a million new tips added per month.
While Yelp boasts more reviews than Foursquare, at 42.5 million, the growth rate is lower than Foursquare's, at 41% year-over-year. But what's most remarkable is that Foursquare is outpacing Yelp in the review department, despite having a fraction of the public company's users. Yelp has roughly 108 million users, whereas Foursquare has just 35 million.
[Blue background: Stacey Ann Alberts via Shutterstock | Dennis Crowley Image: Joel Arbaje for Fast Company]
Cory Monteith?s tragic passing last month left fans of Glee wondering what would happen to his beloved character Finn when the new season begins this fall.
?The third episode will write Finn out of the show,? Fox?s Chairman of Entertainment Kevin Reilly said during the TCA tour for the network (via ET). ?That episode will deal directly with the incidents involved with Cory?s passing and the drug abuse in particular.?
?Ryan [Murphy] will shoot some PSA?s with the cast, who will speak directly to the audience,? he added.
All the proceeds from the music in that episode will go to forming a foundation in Cory?s memory.
Also, today only: Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX200V Digital Camera, $249.99 (48% off). Amazing what you can get for under $250 now: ?Its 18.2MP sensor and 30X optical/60X Clear Image zoom capture breathtaking photos at up to 10fps, plus ultra-stabilized Full HD 1080/60p videos.?
