With the print product usually reaching subscribers only once per day, newspapers have turned to the Internet as a way to compete with 24-hour news sources such as television and radio. By including links to fresh stories, media outlets hope to drive traffic to their Web sites and increase advertising revenues.

Sports teams and colleges, likewise, are taking advantage of the marketing potential that social media provides.

"We were one of the first teams to jump into all these (things)," said Eric Schulz, vice president for marketing with the Utah Jazz. "We did it so fans could interact with the team. People like the fact that they can send a request or question and have it answered directly by someone with the team."

The Jazz, who for the past couple of years have given fans an opportunity to write team-hosted blogs, have an employee dedicated to social media, Schulz said. That person updates Web sites, sends out Twitter messages and answers questions from fans. The team has 5,300 followers on Twitter and more than 10,000 on Facebook.

Schulz said the team has sent as many as 10,000 text messages a day to drive ticket sales and other promotions. The recent "ticket buddy" program designed to help season-ticket holders split a year's tickets with another fan drew more requests for information via text message than actual phone calls.

"For a lot of people," Schulz said, "it really has taken over as the preferred method of communication."

The Jazz boast more than 31,000 fans on Facebook, and Schulz said the team has designs to further push into the world of social media and fan interaction, with live fan polls during games allowing fans to text in their votes for player of the game.

"We're all kind of stumbling forward with this, but we think we are on to something and it is working," Schulz said. "We're going to try and embrace it even more."

There are, of course, dangers in social media for athletes.

There are countless impostors out there pretending to be a certain athlete or coach. A Jerry Sloan impostor has a Twitter page complete with a folksy message and a John Deere logo. Another account, pretending to be Kyrylo Fesenko, has the young Ukrainian center frustrated by Sloan's coaching and his inability to attract women.

Several sports personalities have sued to stop impersonators, and Twitter has begun using a "Verified Account" designation on high-profile pages for celebrities and other public figures.

C.J. Miles has a fairly active Twitter account under the name KidCoolC, but few other Jazz players are currently on the service — something Schulz said the team may encourage if for no other reason than to protect themselves from impostors.