Alistair Niederer writes about the first truly social olympics.
Last week marked the milestone that it is now 100 days to the Olympic games in London. These milestones are a little artificial as the 100-days-to-go mark really means nothing other than it’s getting close now, but as the people of London have been waiting for seven years I guess you could say that being in double-digit days until the start is worth celebrating.
I would like to draw your attention to something that I find really interesting about the London Olympic games – that it will be the first time there is a truly social online Olympic event, there is even an online hub connecting fans with athletes. I know that Beijing was in 2008and social networking was being used then, but it was not as common as it is now. Four years ago most people were only just getting started with Facebook – unless they really were early adopters.
And the biggest difference between then and now is the explosion of mobile computing – smart phones. The Apple iPhone has changed the world and yet it was only a year old at the time of the Beijing games. Now we are up to the fourth generation Apple device and Google have released Android – the smart phone with a built-in camera connected to the Internet is now ubiquitous.
So why does this matter? ….. read more here …
