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Posts Tagged ‘olympics’

Will the Olympics Suffer from its No-Social Rules?

As we near the London Summer Olympics, it seems there will very limited insight provided by the army of volunteers (approx. 70,000) via Twitter, Facebook and any other popular social media services.

The edict, handed down from the Organizing Committee, is an antiquated way of doing business. The victims are the fans and supporters, who have grown accustomed to social media providing a behind-the-scenes look at big events.

This, by no way, means athletes will be limited, but let’s be honest, athletes can be fairly generic compared to someone who is part of the event from a different perspective.

Athletes have an image to protect and future endorsements to consider; a volunteer does not and, as a result, can be an amazing source of  unfiltered information. The lack of filter can go both ways, but a non-athletes or organizers’ viewpoint seems more enticing.

One of the harsher restrictions is that no volunteer can make public statements about the games without permission. This sounds more like the 2008 Beijing Olympics, but that was more aligned with Beijing’s social media policies. As well, social media has grown a lot in the past four years.

The lack of communication will impact the overall Olympic experience for those outside of the event. We have come to rely on social media to learn, experience, enhance and deliver a voice to everyone.

The rules are understandable from certain standpoints (i.e. protecting the athletes), but there are bigger issues. Out of the 70,000 volunteers, can you imagine how many wonderful stories will not emerge now.

What are your thoughts? Do you think the London Olympics are being overly sensitive, and not putting their millions of fans first?

 

 

By Mark Evans - January 27th, 2012 - 1 Comment »
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Posted in Social Media

My Social Media Highlight of 2010

What was your social media highlight in 2010?

For me, it had to be the opening ceremonies for the winter Olympics in Vancouver. As a proud Canadian, the opening ceremonies were the opportunity to strut our stuff to the world. While the ceremonies were impressed, the television commentary was over the top, syrupy sweet and, to be honest, inane.

So what does a social media enthusiastic do to deal with the situation? You turn off the volume on the television, and fire up Twitter to hear what the people are saying about the opening ceremonies. Rather than fawning platitudes and babble by TV commentators, the TwitterSphere was deep and rich with brilliant, insight and hilarious play-by-play action as the ceremonies progressed.

As much as listening to the conversations was entertaining, it was so good I eventually jumped into the fray to completely engage. To me, it epitomized the power of social media. You had people from around the world getting together for an amazing conversation that could not have existed five years ago. It made watching the opening ceremonies a better and more engaging experience.

When I finally signed off about midnight, I was exhilarated, excited and exhausted by the experience. And, of course, I was very proud to be a Canadian.

By Mark Evans - December 29th, 2010 - 4 Comments »
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Posted in Social Media

The Olympics’ Social Media Stars

The Vancouver Winter Olympics ended Sunday, and by all accounts, it was a huge success from beginning to end.

Within the social media landscape, the Vancouver Olympics had a 91% positive sentiment rating according to Sysomos MAP, while attracting four million tweets and 300,000 blog posts.

Given the terrific performances by the more than 2,600 athletes, we wanted to focus on some of the high-profile medal winners to see how much social media attention they attracted.

Using Sysomos MAP, we did a query using the athlete’s name and olympics OR olympic OR vancouver OR games. We then looked at overall sentiment and the number of tweets.

In terms of sentiment, Canadian Ashleigh McIvor had the most positive sentiment (67%). McIvor, above left, won the gold medal in the women’s ski cross, while her model-like looks attracted a lot of attention.

Another Canadian, Alex Bilodeau, had the second-highest positive sentiment (63%). Bilodeau won the men’s mogul event, making him the first Canadian to take home a gold medal in Canada. During the Olympics in Montreal (1976) and Calgary (1988), Canada was only able to win silver medals.

U.S. snowboarder Shaun White was the Twitter “star” with 27,896 tweets during the Olympics, nearly double the 14,333 tweets that mentioned U.S. alpine racer Lindsey Vonn. White, an international superstar, defended his Olympic halfpipe title with a near-perfect performance.

One of the most surprising things was the lack of attention paid to Norwegian curler Thomas Ulsrud, whose team attracted a huge amount of attention for their colorful checkered pants. While Ulsrud attracted only 33 tweets, a Facebook Page – The Norwegian Olympic Curling Team’s Pants – now has more than 580,000 fans.

By Mark Evans - March 1st, 2010 - 1 Comment »
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Posted in Events, Social Media

Congrats, Canada and Our Olympians!

As a Canadian company, it has been a challenge to stay completely focused on work over the past couple of week while the Winter Olympics took place in Vancouver.

Probably more so than the Calgary Winter Olympics in 1988, Canadians were wildly enthusiastic about the Olympics, and Vancouver turned into a two-week party even for people who didn’t attend any Olympic events.

For Canadians, the Olympics concluded on an extraordinary high as Canada battled the United States for the gold medal in hockey. For three hours, most of Canada came a standstill until Sidney Crosby scored the winning goal for Canada in overtime.

The gold medal capped off an amazing performance by skating athletes, who won a record number of gold medals for a Winter Olympics. As important, the games was well-organized and Vancouver dominated the stage for all the right reasons for the past two weeks.

As far as the dominant conversations over the past two week, “medal” was the biggest point of discussions with “hockey” and “Canada” having the strongest associations.

By Mark Evans - March 1st, 2010 - No Comments »
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Posted in Events, Social Media

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