In social media, all kinds of community events have found their second wind, and it’s a powerful one at that. The pics-or-it-didn’t-happen phenomenon coerces the most reluctant/ clueless of users to document major developments around them online. There’s no reason for me to wax poetic about the sheer strength of social media, except to remind you that if you’ve ever done something remotely stupid in public in the past few years, chances are you’re an internet celebrity and you don’t even know it.
The kind of publicity that social media affords brands is mind blowing in itself, and for an affair such as the Olympics, the possibilities were endless. Thankfully, the Olympics committee acknowledged this and, much in advance to the events, put the following plans together, apart from updating the usual Twitter and Facebook feeds:
1) Athletes Hub – An aggregator app allowing users to follow athletes and gain badges combined with a live feed of users’ interaction dubbed ‘Live From The Village’.
2) Instagram – With over 400 Olympians already on Instagram, and scores of users feverishly sharing anything remotely Olympics-related, setting up an Instagram profile was an obvious step. The profile has gained extreme momentum, rising from the 25,000 followers before the Games began to the current 95,000 (and counting).
3) Tumblr – One of the most exciting and rewarding steps taken by the committee are its 4 official Tumblr pages – Faces of Olympians, Olympic Fashion, Olympic Moments (highly recommended!) and the feed aggregator.
4) Foursquare: Specials introduced enabling 4sq users to win free tickets to the Games, upon checking in to a venue.
Google+ was duly ignored despite the 1.6+ million users the IOC boasts. Just as well.
That isn’t so hard to believe since the opening ceremony that threw every single British thing against the wall in hopes of something sticking, and it did. Apart from a bazillion farm animals, this Danny Boyle-designed psychosis incorporated a model of Glastonbury Tor, two mosh pits, and the largest harmonically tuned bell in the world. But the fun didn”t stop there, because it”s not an Opening Ceremony unless a 40-foot-tall Voldemort does battle with 30 Mary Poppinses.
Also, when Mr. Bean helps you open the ceremony with the theme from Chariots of Fire? That, dear sir, is a thing to behold.
Did it outdo China”s terrifying show of synchronicity from 2008?
Well, the opening ceremony alone resulted in more than 9.66 million related tweets, which is more than the entire Beijing Olympics in 2008. To be fair, the social networking giant was in its infancy back then, but the massive numbers means it”s safe to say this Twitter phenomenon might have some staying power.
Olympics have been brought back to life via a slew of YouTube videos, too, although most of them focus largely on the more important facets of the Games, such as an over-enthusiastic Games’ worker who you’d heart, the rollercoaster-esque (and HILARIOUS )expressions of a US gymnast’s parents watching her compete, or an Olympic-themed water-gun fight. However, live feeds of various news broadcasters have proven more than sufficient to stay updated constantly, while Indian media takes a fast-and-loose approach towards TV broadcasting.
The fervor with which the interwebz have dived into everything that’s Games’-related, from the severely unfortunate uniforms of Spanish Olympians to the mega-wave of joy that went through all of Facebook and Twitter in India over winning the only medal we have yet, this year, (Gagan Suneja – shooting) is far from astonishing.
Although, if it gets tiresome after a while you can always take pointers off of this gorilla.
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Tags: Athletes hub, Beijing, campaigns, Foursquare, Instagram, London, Olympics, Social Media, Tumblr