
The Curious Case of Bryan Colangelo and the Secret Twitter Account - jmduke
https://www.theringer.com/nba/2018/5/29/17406750/bryan-colangelo-philadelphia-76ers-twitter-joel-embiid-anonymous-markelle-fultz
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timavr
This is a great story.

Just wondering if they can this analysis on other famous executives and see if
somebody else engages in such activities.

At the same time, we are all human and have emotions and anonymity is a great
way to let them out. Feel bad that he was outed.

~~~
pitt1980
Is it a great story?

Last GM:

The Source

Our source, whose identity is still unknown, contacted me via anonymous “egg”
accounts on both Instagram and Twitter, claiming that they had a scoop. The
source explained that they worked in artificial intelligence and, after
noticing a “bunch of weird tweets” directed at Sixers writers, used an open-
source data analysis tool to link five accounts through commonalities
including similarities in who the accounts followed and linguistic quirks.

“They all have a pattern of likes, follows, and tweets which are
EXTRAORDINARILY similar,” the source wrote in a direct message on Twitter. For
example, the source explained, all five follow accounts tied to Sixers
players, members of the Philly front office, and beat reporters who cover the
team; Toronto Raptors writers; Canadian high school basketball; and University
of Chicago basketball. They discuss the same topics, use strikingly similar
phrasing, and, at times, have tweeted out identical media images. Some of
those shared attributes were odd, such as a distaste for beards and “unknown
sources.” According to the source’s findings, the three newest accounts
followed 75 accounts in common—roughly half of their total respective
follows—with another 52 accounts followed by two of the three. (The Ringer was
unable to verify those numbers, but they seem to track with our analysis.)

[https://www.theringer.com/nba/2018/5/29/17406750/bryan-
colan...](https://www.theringer.com/nba/2018/5/29/17406750/bryan-colangelo-
philadelphia-76ers-twitter-joel-embiid-anonymous-markelle-fultz)

And Hinkie? Is he sad? Angry? Vindicated? No, he says, he is happy. Happy for
Embiid. Happy for all the people in the Sixers’ organization.

He’s not terribly interested in talking about it, though. Hinkie has long
espoused having “the longest view in the room,” and he’s currently focused on
the future. Machine learning. Artificial intelligence. The cross-pollination
of different industries. On a noncompete until the end of the season, he’s
viewing this “gap year” (his phrase) as an opportunity to reassess, reinvest
in himself and shed his old persona.

[https://www.si.com/nba/2016/11/30/sam-hinkie-after-the-
proce...](https://www.si.com/nba/2016/11/30/sam-hinkie-after-the-process-
philadelphia-76ers)

\------

Not sure that makes him the source, hard to see how benefits in any way that's
not petty and low payoff.

Seems like if he's the source, he's tipping off his hand in a manner that's
extremely low payout from what's possible.

\-----------

Lets say you're Daryl Morey, and you have to make decisions on whether to
clear out cap room to try and make a run at signing LeBron James,

how useful would it be to know which sock puppet twitter accounts are James'?

which are people in his inner circle (I hear he's touchy about the term
'posse')?

which are all the accounts for all the other GMs who might be interested in
signing James?

\-------

this information is potentially wildly useful

it's even more useful if other people don't know you have this capacity.

\------------- \-------------

Let's say you don't have an NBA owners ear,

Let's say you just want to accurately price stocks,

What are you placing the odds at the some number of publically traded CEO have
a few sock puppet social media accounts that they use to manage their public
reputations?

How profitable would it be to be able to ID those sock puppet accounts?

