Candice Wiggins breaks down her squad’s Twitter movement.
by Candice Wiggins / @candicewiggins
It is my belief that #LosLynx should and will be trending worldwide on Twitter sometime real soon, so in light of that prediction, I wanted to explore the history of this #hashtag so you can know how it made it to Twitter. There are basically two stories that coincide with one another, Lindsay Whalen’s story, and then mine. And if you don’t have a Twitter account…I don’t know what else to tell you except you “kinda just have to be there” to understand the power of a hashtag.
Lindsey Whalen’s Story
The Los Lynx movement actually started last year, as I found out a few weeks ago, when Whalen showed me this commercial for Bing.com on YouTube (above) that she had seen during the summer of last year. At the end of the commercial the guy says “Los Links!!!” The commercial is dated from July of 2010 and that’s where she got the reference. I never saw it then, and I was away from Minnesota most of last season, but Lindsay said she couldn’t get it stuck out her head and would say it during practice. It’s actually a shame that that commercial didn’t begin a #LosLynx movement, but now fast forward to 2011…
My Story
I stayed in America for the first time this off-season, and as I result I was able to watch a lot of NBA games as well as attend NBA All-Star Weekend in L.A. One of the things that I remember most about this past NBA season is when the teams were wearing Spanish-themed jerseys (for example: “El Heat”, “Los Spurs” and “Los Lakers”). The reason for the Spanish donned NBA jerseys was to celebrate the NBA’s Latin fan base with a series of “Latino Noche” initiatives. Such a dope marketing concept, and it made me think about how cool it would be if we had that in the WNBA? One day at practice “Los Lynx” was said aloud and then it caught on with our whole team from there.
But…I had to take it one step further. Instead of just keeping it among the team, why not bring all of the Lynx fans on board too?! So that’s when I decided to go to Twitter, which to me is the most revolutionized form of social media, as well as being the dopest virtual community the world has ever seen. Instant interaction plus freedom of speech at its best! All I had to do was put a hashtag on it, and subsequently #LosLynx was created. I recently looked back in my tweet archives, and I noticed the first #LosLynx tweet began 70 days ago, after an exciting victory for us. After that, all it had to be was retweeted. And retweeted it was.
Taj McWilliams-Franklin added the “worldwide” component to it (as in “Prestige Worldwide” from the movie Stepbrothers), and now we even have flight attendants shouting “LosLynx Worldwide” on the airplane! Holla.
Maya Moore’s explanation of “Los” over “Las”
There has been some dispute over whether we should say “LasLynx” instead of “Los Lynx” since we’re women, and Maya helped figure out the distinction. First of all, it has to be LOS Lynx simply because of that commercial Lindsay saw, but also, what Maya pointed out, it all depends upon what the actual Spanish word for “lynx” is. Well, I looked it up, and sure enough in Spanish the word lynx is “el lince” A WNBA team’s Spanish version: Los Lynx!!
As we finish the regular season and make this Playoff run, feel the movement of #LosLynx! Follow us on Twitter, hashtag it, and then tell us how you feel! We want to know! And we want YOU to know that we appreciate the love we’ve been getting from you all season!
xoxo
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