BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Tom Crean was born to tweet.

Consider some of the quick messages the Indiana coach has authored since joining the social network, twitter.com, two weeks ago.

“Paul Davis from (Michigan State) and the Clippers is trying 2 find the girl of his dreams on Bravo. A Indiana alum would never need a show 2 get a date.”

Or:

“When you want to eat in a hurry but don’t want fast food, you can never go wrong with an authentic Mexican restaurant. A meal served in 5 (minutes).”

Or, more specifically about the Hoosiers.

“I know our players don’t look forward to all the defensive footwork and explosion drills we do, but they will understand why when we are winning.”

“Tweeting,” which allows a person to send short messages via a phone or computer to an unlimited audience of “followers,” is quickly becoming a popular form of communication for college coaches.

Crean takes credit for getting Kentucky coach John Calipari started. Crean acknowledges he created a monster. “I just read that coach Calipari is up to 7,100 followers on twitter,” Crean tweeted earlier this week. “I will never hear the end of it from him.”

Crean has nearly 3,000 followers at twitter.com/tomcrean. Fans can sign up at the Web site to receive Crean’s tweets on their phones. But this isn’t back-and-forth communication. Crean does not read or receive replies.

If a 6-10 basketball recruit or two or five dozen want to follow along, all the better.

“We’re in a major rebuilding phase at Indiana and we have to do everything that we can do to show visibility,” Crean said. “This is a way to kind of put out what’s going on. I don’t want to make it corny. I don’t want to make it, ‘Hey, I drove through the McDonald’s drive-thru,’ or a lot of that because I don’t know if that’s interesting to people. But I want to have some fun with it, and I enjoy it.”

Crean is the only Big Ten basketball coach tweeting. Ohio State’s Thad Matta and Illinois coach Bruce Weber are looking into it.

Crean knows the visibility gained through tweeting could help with recruiting. Bobby Capobianco, a member of IU’s recruiting Class of 2009, has a note on his Facebook page that says he can’t stop tweeting, and adds, “I do like the updates from coach Crean.”

But Crean said he thinks the benefits go further.

“I don’t want to reach just a very narrow audience,” Crean said. “That’s not what Indiana basketball is about. We want to reach a widespread audience, but certainly recruiting is at the forefront of that.”

Rules prevent Crean from talking about recruits or where he is recruiting.

“I’m not trying to play tricks on it, or trying to get an advantage by saying where we’re at,” Crean said. “I’m just saying what I think.”

Crean insisted he won’t be tweeting at halftime of games. A USA Today story this week mentioned LSU football coach Les Miles will tweet before games, at halftime and after games.

“I’m not going to do that, and neither will my players,” Crean said.

“Well, let me put it this way. If you don’t see someone come back out for the second half, or they come back out in street clothes, you’ll know they were twittering at halftime. I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

It hasn’t been all smooth sailing.

Last week, Crean was tweeting while driving in Kentucky and nearly side-swiped a passing car.

His wife learned about it . . . after he tweeted about that, too.

She wasn’t amused.

Crean will not do that again.

“It is just completely insane to text message and drive at the same time,” Joani Crean said Thursday while flashing her husband a matter-of-fact look.

“He won’t be doing that anymore.”