Today marks one year to go until the 2012 Olympic Games in London next summer. London will be a great host city and for the first time the committee is encouraging athletes participating in the games to get involved via social media.
Athletes are welcome to tweet during the events as long as they are not using vulgar language and not using it to, “disclose any information which is confidential or private in relation to any other person or organization” (IOC Social Media, Blogging and Internet Guidelines for the London 2012 Olympic Games) . Around 10,500 athletes from 200 countries are expected to compete at next year’s Olympics (plenty of Twitter accounts).
The FIFA Women’s World Cup made twitter history this year with 7,196 tweets per second. The Olympic Games will surely target the World Cup statistics as their goal to beat. The Games have launched a Twitter competition via their website, which encourages fans to support their countries on Twitter with the hashtag #1yeartogo. The competition which started today already has over 45,000 entries. Brazil (21%) and Great Britain (20%) are leading the contest with the United States currently 3rd (12%).
The Twitter contest is a fun way to raise awareness about how socially savvy the next Olympics will be. People will be checking in, reviewing, commenting, and sharing, the Olympics are showing that they do not want to miss conversations. What do you think about Twitter and athletic events? Should athletes be able to share on social networks while competing?
[...] 1. Have you heard? It is now under a year before the Olympics spring into action in London and the countdown has seriously begun. I heard Eddie Izzard on Chris Evans Breakfast Show this morning inspiring the nation to join in and get excited about this once in a life time occurrence: the Olympics happening in our backyard. What of Social Media though, what can we expect for the Olympics? For the first time ever the Olympic Committee are encouraging athletes to get involved via social media to share their experience of the event. There are of course some guidelines and suggestions for the participants which you can read more about over at SocialStrategy1. [...]