If social media engagement was a competition between the most recent Olympics, the winners would look something like this.
• Bronze Medal: 2008 Summer Games in Beijing
• Silver Medal: 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver
• Gold Medal: 2012 Summer Games in London
The London Olympics are already being coined the “socialympics,” and this month will definitely usher in a new era of expectations for the games. In 2008, Twitter had 6 million accounts and Facebook had 100 million users. Today, Twitter is looking at 140 million users and Facebook is a network of 900 million people. Come the end of the month, we’re all about to see just how much influence social media has around the world.
The truth is we’ve adopted all kinds of new behaviors because mobile phones are smarter and tablets are all the rage. Now, social media is a daily staple and staying connected to the world’s biggest event is easier than ever before.
Not only will the Olympic audience have access to immediate updates on events, but you can bet athletes will be in on the action. In fact, the players will have to abide by a number of rules and regulations if they want to stay active online during the competitions.
In the guidelines set by the International Olympic Committee, participants and accredited persons are encouraged to engage with the public via social platform, but required to abide by standards.
“It is entirely acceptable for a participant or any other accredited person to do a personal posting, blog or tweet … however, any such postings, blogs or tweets must be in first-person, diary-type format and should not be in the role of a journalist – i.e. they must not report on competition.”
If you’re interested in checking out additional guidelines, go here.
The Olympics also has official portals including a branded Facebook page, Twitter handle, Tumblr and even Instagram. The official IOC created an “Olympic Hub” which consolidates all the social media networks.
So what can we expect as we prep for the July 27th? Proactive Olympic-centric social media campaigns from sponsors. McDonald’s has spent millions on its “we all make the games” campaign, and other key players are also involved including Visa.
Also intriguing is how the Olympics will try to contain the content of the events. With smartphones and the ability to upload content immediately, it will be hard to maintain exclusivity. For broadcasters like NBC who paid more than $1 billion for rights to the London Games, the Olympics Committee is faced with the job of ensuring no one uploads video to public sites.
If one thing is certain, the magnitude of social media in this coming Olympics is going to be record breaking.
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There is a chance that because of the time zone difference people may have to stay away from social media platforms if they want to be surprised at the outcome of events. Most of the joy of watching the events on TV is seeing the event unfold. If we already know the outcome because of social channels there isn’t much of a point in watching.
I want to be surprised, entertained and caught in the moment because the Olympics is still the greatest competition in the world. The thrill of victory and agony of defeat is the premis of pure competition. I don’t want to lose that so I will not be involved in any media that will give me a heads up on what took place before I see it on TV.
I agree with the brilliant Taylor on her assesment on the Socialympics but I am very old school and want the surprise.
Like other bullet-point loving people, I’d rather just get the results on the majority of events than wade through all the commentary, commercials and other content that has to be seen and heard before getting to the results that I’m interested in. Social media delivers the goods – and the freedom to just pick up some highlights through NBC.
Social media was certainly used in abundance at the London Games. I enjoyed frequent Facebook updates and Tweets from the Games this summer, and most athletes proved to be well-versed effective use of social media; however, despite strict guidelines provided by the IOC, some athletes managed to get themselves into trouble.
While athletes from Greece and Switzerland made more significant social media blunders that resulted in their banishment from the games, several athletes tweeted comments that would have been better left “untweeted”. Negative tweets about the city of London, ref insults, pointless complaints about uniforms and other unnecessary, petty comments were abundant. The Olympics are about national pride, honor, fair play and the love of a sport, and I hope that at future games teams will place more strict guidelines for their own athletes. Let’s bring back the true reason for the games and encourage athletes to keep their whiney, immature comments to themselves.