Film room: Breaking down Tom Brady’s first day on Twitter

April Fool’s Day may be over but its outcome will be felt for a long time: Tom Brady announced that he had expanded his social media presence and joined Twitter — doing it in the most Tom Brady way possible, by posting a dad-joke level tweet about retiring and spending his spare time tweeting. And tweeting he (i.e. in arrangement with his social team, more probable than not) did, at least a couple of times.

But let’s start at the beginning and break down the GOAT’s first day on Twitter one-by-one.

Tom Brady’s profile

The Twitter account @TomBrady grew at a rate of about 1,000 followers per minute early on. If you hurry up now, you can be among the select few: right now, the club is still not even 300,000 members big — a club that sees the following when visiting Brady’s profile as of right now (being 5:00 a.m. on April 2):

Let’s go through the profile’s most distinct features to find out more about Brady’s profile:

The profile picture: Ah, that magnificent jaw-line. We see Brady happily looking away from the camera, possibly towards his favorite Super Bowl: the next one. And that appears to be a realistic option when looking at the jersey he’s wearing. The photo was taken at Super Bowl 53 and as you may have heard by now, the Patriots won the game — giving Brady his all-time record sixth championship.

The header image: The six titles are also part of the header image, as you can see them listed on the shirt he is wearing in the header. The photo itself is from a few days after the Super Bowl, from the Patriots’ championship parade, and shows Brady amidst the two things he cares most about: his family and his football. Speaking of them, they are also prominently featured in...

The personal information: The @TomBrady handle, verified of course, and the phrase “Family and Football” — no more words are needed to describe Tom Brady and his newly created presence on Twitter.

The content: So far, Brady’s account posted just two Tweets connected to each other. Making a thread instead of two separate posts is some next level stuff — Brady surely did his homework and research before dipping his toes into the raging and not entirely clean waters that is Twitter dot com.

Tom Brady’s tweets

As just said, Brady made two stand-alone tweets from his account but he also six replies to other people: his wife, Gisele Bündchen, actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, former Patriots wide receiver Donte’ Stallworth, ESPN’s Steve Levy, and pro golfer Rickie Fowler. But let’s break those two forms of using Twitter apart.

Brady’s tweets

There are two of Brady’s tweets so far, getting posted 65 minutes apart from each other:

Brady’s first Tweet, of course, the aforementioned dad-joke. Of course, joke’s on us if he is really retiring and kudos to him if that were the case — what a way it would be to go! Given his previous statements about him wanting to play until age 45, however, it looks as if his tweet is indeed an attempt at April Foolery.

It was then followed up by another tweet as a reaction to the first:

Was it a bad joke? The joke itself maybe was, but making it the announcement that Brady had joined Twitter makes it worthwhile.

Brady’s replies

As mentioned above, Brady — not counting himself reacting to his first-ever tweet — posted six replies on his first day. A solid interaction rate with plenty of star power involved in it. Along the way, the future Hall of Fame football players showed great photoshop skills...

...and a really good feel for his surroundings — the hallmark of every great quarterback and social media user:

All in all, Brady produced some solid content all day long. He showed plenty of versatility and an ability to rally the troops — just look at his growth-rate and the numbers of likes and retweets on each post of his. Oh, and Brady also showed tremendous off-field chemistry with his number one teammate:

Tom Brady’s favorite accounts

Nothing out of the ordinary when it comes to who Brady follows. After starting the day following nobody, he started firing up the old “follow” button — hitting it as often as if it was overtime in a playoff game. The first five accounts to see the honor of being followed by the GOAT bestowed upon them were the following:

TB12 Sports: @TB12sports

New England Patriots @Patriots

Gisele Bündchen: @giseleofficial

Julian Edelman: @Edelman11

Rob Gronkowski: @RobGronkowski

A great mix of his team, his business, his wife, as well as a current and a former teammate. Great level of diversity that also can be found through the rest of the accounts he follows: from players he played with, to sponsors and business ventures, to artists, to other athletes throughout the world of sports.

All in all, Brady’s first day on Twitter was similar to his first day as a starting quarterback back in 2001: it may not have been perfect but many of the traits that have since made him the all-time-great he is were already on display.