Olympic Games Getting Social

Social Media | Olympic Games Getting Social

2012 Olympic Games

As athletes and fans from around the world descend upon London for the 2012 Olympic Games, it’s almost certain that the social media world will be buzzing with Olympic chatter.

With an anticipated increase in tweets and fans searching for athletes to follow, the International Olympic Committee has revealed an all-new Social Media Hub for fans to use.

How big of an increase?

To put it in perspective – during the 2008 Games in Beijing, Facebook only had 100 million users and Twitter with six million. Today, those memberships are more than 900 million and 600 million, respectively. That’s a decent growth spurt in four years, eh?)

The all-new hub is pretty cool for the fans. The site has a searchable database for their athletes – searchable by team, sport, or event. Fans can even live chat with athletes by using the “Inside the Olympic Village” feature. Want to know who’s trending and who’s popular? The Olympic Athletes’ Hub keeps track of the athletes with the most fans (Facebook & Twitter combined, LeBron James), top tweets (American swimmer Ryan Lochte is a regular here), and trending athletes (Spain’s Rafael Nadal is usually near the top).

There’s plenty more to discover as part of the Hub, like: featured stories on various athletes and an “Olympic Challenge”. The Challenge is not yet released, but appears to be the Olympics’ version of Fantasy Sports – pick an athlete and earn points based on that performance.

There’s plenty to be excited about in London beginning next week and the IOC has done surprisingly well embracing social media. How will the athletes react though? The IOC reports more than 2,000 athletes have already registered. Some countries, like host country Great Britain, are even schooling athletes to be careful about what they tweet.

We should be in store for some amazing competition and we’ll be able to track all the social action from one spot. Who are you following?

To learn more about the Olympic Athletes’ Hub, see the story in Techcrunch.

Read how the British are preparing for the social media flourish.

Get more from the Olympic Games on their social networks: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Instagram @facesofolympian. If you’re in London, check-in with Foursquare!

Olympic Games Getting Social