Professional Documents
Culture Documents
What The Tweet - The Socialympics
What The Tweet - The Socialympics
R.AGE 11
ics is The london 2012 Olymp the first social being dubbed media Games, where d, everything will be tweete ed. tagram-ed and Facebookins
ODAY marks the first day of the most anticipated sporting event of the year the London 2012 Olympics. All the athletes and officials would have already been in London for the days leading up to the event with their smartphones, tablet devices and laptops in tow. Yup, London 2012 is being dubbed the first social media Olympics, which led to the International Olympic Committee releasing a 15-point social media, blogging and Internet guideline for participants. The last games was held in Beijing, where most of the social networks used by the majority of the worlds digital citizens are banned; plus, social media was only in its infancy a mere four years ago. Not that the term first is that accurate. In 2010, Vancouver hosted the winter Olympics and already social networks were buzzing with activity. But in the eyes of public opinion, the summer Olympics is the one to watch, and what a show it has been already. In the last few days alone, several high profile incidents have already occurred on social networks. For one, Greek triple jumper Voula Papahristou has been suspended from the countrys Olympic team after making what was considered to be a racist remark on Twitter. Late last week, when the first batch of athletes were arriving from around the world, American hurdler Kerron Clement got Twitterverse buzzing when he tweeted that it took his bus four hours to get to the Olympic Village from the airport due to the driver getting lost. Athletes are sleepy, hungry and need to pee, he wrote. The news made front-page headlines in Britain, especially at a time when there has been much criticism of Londons ability to deal with transport issues with the influx of people during the games. But athletes and their social networks aside, there is much more to
expect from the most Net-friendly games. If youre planning on following the games closely, you might want to download some of the official London 2012 apps, including the Results app which is available for Android, iOS and Windows Phone 7. These apps are not the only way on the interwebs to keep up-to-date with the Olympics. Media organisations such as the NBC have made plenty of plans to keep its audiences entertained and updated with the goings-on of the next fortnight. Besides the live stream expected to be over 3,500 hours worth of live video it plans to offer, NBC is also teaming up with social service Storify to curate news from the Olympics. Journalists from the news organisation will pull feeds from various social networks including Facebook and Twitter for its Today.com website and that of its various TV stations. Major corporations and sponsors too have been capitalising on social media to sell their brand and products. Already, athletes have been banned for a month from talking about non-Olympic Games-sponsored corporations on their social network. This has led to a stream of sponsored social media updates before the deadline earlier this week. Then there are those corporations who missed out, trying to make the most of the Olympic buzz without infringing any rules. Nike, for example, released a video (view it at bit. ly/worldlondon) this week celebrat-