It's a Festival of Tweeting

This whole Twitter thing is off the chain. Everyone is tweeting. Tweet tweet tweet.

Yesterday, during rookie orientation alone, the tweeting edged toward digital cacophony proportions. I can imagine what today and tomorrow will be like.

And we're headed into the first fully twitter-enabled Indy 500, so buckle up for the 140-characters-at-a-time digital fur to fly.

Your racing servant, @pressdog, is hip to the tweeting as well. I use my twitter to alert the followers when this site is updated.

Also, when at the track, I try to tweet out some interesting tidbits. It's easy to get carried away with it though and tweet stuff like "I'm walking down pit lane now." Big whoop. At Kansas I was listening to news conferences by the drivers and tweeting out quotes on the fly. Tweet Spam!

Then there are things like "hash tags" and many other twitterisms that you can get all into if you're so inclined. Plus a whole body of work on Twitter etiquette everyone should review. Like everything (yes, including alcohol), I approach Twitter with moderation.

If you want to know when your favorite driver is going to the gym to work out or headed out to a restaurant, Twitter will keep you posted. Second-by-second. I strongly suspect some of each driver's PR Posse is put in charge of tweeting at least some of the time. This is fine with me since it provides my PR homeys with still more job security, as does the proliferation of "driver"-authored columns and articles. But no doubt some of the tweets come right from the fingers (or thumbs if we're talking mobile tweeting devices) of actual drivers.

Plus many bloggers and mainstream media have Twitter accounts. Curt Cavin from the Indy Star (@curtcavin) tweets out some interesting stuff. My boys at Trackside Online (@tracksideonline) represent often. See list below.

If you're not familiar with the Twitter, it's basically a way to transmit 140-character messages to whoever is "following" you.

It's also the New Thing, with many-many marketing implications, so drivers and teams and the league are fully on board as yet another way to connect with the customers (fans).

Getting into Twitter is super duper easy. Go to twitter.com and follow the ultra-quick steps to sign up for an account. You get to give yourself a screen name (I chose "pressdog." Go figure.)

Once you have an account you can "follow" anyone you want. That just means when they tweet (post something) it will pop up on your Twitter page. You can also unfollow people, or delete people following you if you're a little spooked by them.

You can also enable Twitter to send updates from whoever you are following to your mobile phone. Many-many drivers use their iPhones (there's an ap for that!) and Blackberries to twitter. There are also extensions for your Web browsers that will give you a little pop-up whenever someone you follow tweets. I use "twitterfox," an extension for my Firefox browser.

Long-story-short, if you're looking for Full Information Immersion, Twitter is essential.

Here's a partial list of some of the IndyCar peeps on Twitter. It changes second-by-second, so this is by no means comprehensive. One of the things you can do is check out who everyone is following and find people you'd like to follow as well. One of ways I became hip to Danica Patrick's twitter (@danicapatrick) was by looking at who another driver was following.

Like all things Danica, she has 1,995 followers (as of Wednesday morning), was following ONE person (and it wasn't @pressdog, frowny face!) and has yet to Tweet once. So that's 1,995 followers despite never tweeting. Pretty normal for Danicaland, actually.

Here's a partial list of who's tweeting. Again, the list changes second by second, but it's a starting point.

Update: Since I posted this I've heard from a few with editions. I'm sure there are many, many extremely high quality people who are left off this list, but, we do what we can.

OFFICIALDOM:

Motor Speedway: twitter.com/IndyTalk

IndyCar Series: twitter.com/IndyCarNation

IMS Productions: twitter.com/imsproductions

500 Festival: twitter.com/500Festival Teams

TEAMS:

Bryan Herta Autosport: twitter.com/BHA

Conquest Racing: twitter.com/ConquestRacing

KV Racing: twitter.com/kvracing

Luczo Dragon Racing: twitter.com/luczodragon

HVM Racing: twitter.com/HVMracing

Rubicon Racing: twitter.com/rubiconsports

Sam Schmidt Motorsports: twitter.com/SSM99

Vision Racing: twitter.com/Visionracing

DRIVERS:

Sara Fisher: twitter.com/SarahFisher67

Marco Andretti: twitter.com/Andretti26

Stanton Barrett: twitter.com/stantonbarrett

James Hinchcliffe: twitter.com/Hinchtown

Ryan Hunter-Reay: twitter.com/ryanracing

Tony Kanaan: twitter.com/TonyKanaan

Alex Lloyd: twitter.com/alex_lloyd

Mario Moraes: twitter.com/mariomoraesindy

Tomas Scheckter: twitter.com/tomasscheckter

Alex Tagliani: twitter.com/TaglianiEnPiste

Danica Patrick: twitter.com/danicapatrick

MEDIA/BLOGS:

Michell-Marie Beer (blog): twitter.com/whatimthinking

LiveFastRacing.com (blog): twitter.com/livefastracing

RumbleStripRadio.com: twitter.com/Rumblestrip

16th and Georgetown (blog): twitter.com/16andgeorgetown

Autosportradio: twitter.com/autosportradio

pressdog (blog): twitter.com/pressdog

Chris Estrada (blog): twitter.com/estradawriting

Crash Gladys (radio): twitter.com/Crashgladys

Curt Cavin (Indianapolis Star): twitter.com/curtcavin

Kevin Lee (1070 The Fan radio): twitter.com/KevinLee23

Dave ‘The King” Wilson (radio): twitter.com/racinirlradio

ESPN: twitter.com/ESPN

Furious Wedge (blog): twitter.com/FuriousWedge

Indianapolis Star 500 coverage: twitter.com/the500

Isitmayyet (blog): twitter.com/Isitmayyet

Jim Pedley (Racin Today): twitter.com/RacinToday

Jeff Iannucci (blog): twitter.com/MyNameisIRL

Paddock Talk (blog): twitter.com/paddocktalk

Planet IRL (blog): twitter.com/planetIRL

SPEED: twitter.com/speedtv

SPEEDtv.com: twitter.com/SPEEDtweets

Speedfreaks (radio): twitter.com/speedfreaks

Trackside Online: twitter.com/tracksideonline

VERSUS: twitter.com/versustv

Steve Zautke: twitter.com/RacingNation

Trackside Online: twitter.com/tracksideonline

Fastmachines.com: twitter.com/fastmachines

The Speed Geek: twitter.com/thespeedgeek

Indy Racing Experience: twitter.com/IRE2seater

Props to the IRL media relations posse for compiling most of this list.

Comments

[AGRfan26]

Marco's is @Andretti26. The Press Release was wrong yesterday. @marco26 is someone else. I'm am administrator on his Fan Zone and he let me know when he started tweeting what his id was. You can find me tweeting for Fan Zone @AGRfan26

[pressdog]

Thanks for the correction, AGRfan26. I just corrected the post.

[Duke]

ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm I think you may have forgotten a couple VERY important twitter accounts

[pressdog]

Added. Added. The twitteri are speaking ...

[Roy Hobbson]

Twit?? - ter??

**yells at those damn kids to get out of my hydrangea garden**

[Indy Racing Experience]

Hey Dog, what about the Indy Racing Experience - @IRE2seater?

[pressdog]

Yes, yes. By all means. Please feel free to add an @'s I missed.

[Bailey]

@fastmachines ;)

[Josh]

Yeah ...seriously dude... @FASTMACHINES

[The Speedgeek]

No doubt...@fastmachines! Oh, also @TheSpeedgeek, if you would, pretty please.

[Paige]

Helio's also on Twitter now.

twitter.com/h3lio