{flickr/Shovelling Son}

The title is just a personal gripe of mine. I just think there should be a more concrete reason for calling it Twitter. They could do it, but have a mute option.

But I digress.

The topic of Twitter is indeed at hand, and today, it coincides with the topic of star power. There are many, many famous individuals on Twitter, but I would argue that a certain demographic’s use of Twitter has made for some of the most powerful and interesting tweets of all. They are professional athletes, and they love this website (Twitter, not mine).

Shaq has it. Dwight Howard has it. Lance Armstrong has it. Serena Williams has it. The list goes on.

All these athletes are reaching out to regular people, like you and me, in a way that was never really possible before. Twitter is definitely the place to be for fun, breaking news on your favorite players.

Which is why the Washington Post wants to the place to be for all athletes’ Twitter accounts, and in doing so, circumvent Twitter.

It’s the Post’s latest in a series of “innovations in news.” The new feature is a part of the sport’s page, in a section called The League, a section strictly on football that relies heavily on user interaction for its success. The Twitter Aggregator attempts to follow any and all NFL players who are on Twitter and put them all in one place for you.

At the main page, you see the latest tweets from players across the league, but with the search bar, you can narrow down the tweets by team or position. It’s a pretty fun tool for fans, and it might clue you into an athlete who you didn’t know had a Twitter account.

My only gripe with this is that the Post has, for now at least, limited this feature to football. It’s a scientific fact that basketball players have far more interesting tweets. Where’s “The League” for the NBA? I hope that happens sooner rather than later.