Connecting at and through the London Olympics

It has been fascinating to observe the growth in social media opportunities between the 2008 and 2012 Olympic Games. An Associated Press post on 19 June announced London Games to Be First Social Media Olympics.

“In Sydney (2000) there was hardly any fast Internet, in Athens (2004) there were hardly any smartphones, in Beijing hardly anyone had social networks,” said Jackie-Brock Doyle, communications director of London organizing committee LOCOG. “That’s all changed. Here, everyone has all that and will be consuming the games in a different way.”

The official London 2012 website has links to:

There is an information page about the use of the official website.
Elana Zak has posted about 7 Social Media Resources for Journalists Covering the Olympics. Her seven resources include:

Earlier this week Ingrid Lunden posted about Facebook’s Social Olympic Ambition, Explore London 2012: A Dedicated Athlete Portal, But No Ads.
My prompt to write this post came from two email alerts:
iSportConnect has announced a Networking Tool for iSportconnect members who will be attending the London Olympic Games.

This tool allows members to keep up to date with all the latest news, events and uniquely find out who will be attending what games whilst giving you the opportunity to make new business and contacts plus arrange meetings.   The 2012 Summer Olympic Games will take place in London, England, United Kingdom, from 27 July to 12 August 2012.

Storify’s 5 Ways to Storify the Summer Olympics:

  • Follow athletes on Twitter, and make a scrapbook of their London Games
  • Storify the latest news about the Games
  • Collect beautiful photos and share them on Pinterest or elsewhere
  • Get all geeky with it
  • An international community of memes

I checked Foursquare too following the announcement of a partnership with the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
The IOC has issued a  set of guidelines for athletes and others accredited for the Games about blogging, posting and tweeting about their experiences. The AP post notes that:

London Olympic organizers have drawn up strict rules for their employees and the 70,000 Olympic volunteers. They have been told not to share their location, any images of scenes in areas that are off limits to the public, or details about athletes, celebrities or dignitaries who they find themselves in contact with.

It was be informative to see how the infrastructure for these social Games deals with such diverse demands:
At the last Summer Olympics in Beijing in 2008, Twitter had about 6 million users and Facebook 100 million. Today, the figure is 140 million for Twitter and 900 million for Facebook.
Photo Credits

4 COMMENTS

  1. There are fun copyright restrictions too on what you can and cannot take. Updating articles on Wikipedia is another way to update things. 😉 There should be a number of articles about Olympians appearing on the front page during the Games.

    • Thank you for calling by, Laura.
      I am looking forward to Wikipedia’s Games and the Paralympic Games.
      Best wishes
      Keith

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