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This Year's London Games Will be First 'Socialympics'

June 20, 2012

(OLYMPICS TECHNOLOGY)

Social media has done a pretty good job of bringing people together during big events. With the summer’s biggest event right around the corner, the Internet is about to be flooded with likes, hashtags, posts, and commentary all about the London Games.


Dubbed as the “socialympics,” the London Games are likely going to be the most socially connected event in the history of social media.

Over at Facebook (News - Alert), a new page specifically designed to help fans from around the globe follow their favorite nations, athletes and events at the upcoming Games, Explore London 2012 has been aggregated into one place using a new tool.

TechCrunch said that once the Games are under way, Explore London 2012 on Facebook will also include athletes’ status updates, photos, and medal wins, as well as historical photographs and other information about notable events.

Facebook’s Olympic page features some 200+ athletes’ profiles, including British hopefuls Jessica Ennis and Tom Daley, dedicated pages to specific sports and a complete timeline history of the competition since the 1800s.

Explore London 2012 took 18 months to develop, Reuters (News - Alert) reports. Those who like individual pages will also be able to see their posts and pictures from the Games.

Anyone who joins the page will also get Explore London 2012 updates in their newsfeed.

The Summer Olympics in Beijing in 2008 saw about six million users on Twitter (News - Alert) and 100 million on Facebook. Today, the figure is 140 million for Twitter and 900 million for Facebook.

"In Sydney (2000) there was hardly any fast Internet, in Athens (2004) there were hardly any smartphones, in Beijing hardly anyone had social networks," said Jackie-Brock Doyle, communications director of London organizing committee LOCOG. "That's all changed. Here, everyone has all that and will be consuming the games in a different way."

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Edited by Brooke Neuman