The London Olympics is known as the first cosical media
Olympics. But organizers and broadcasters now may wish the events were a little
less social, as heavy smartphone use caused technical glitches and Twitter
became a worldwide platform for complaints about the game.
The organizers seem to fail the preparation for
a surge in wireless traffic is inexplicable. It would seem that this would have
been expected, given the inherently social aspect of the Games. Overall,
Twitter reaction to the Games has been solidly positive. But that leaves plenty
of room for hostile comment. In the United States, critics of NBC Universal
flooded Twitter with complaints about the network’s decision to broadcast most
major events in prime time, hours after they have actually taken place. And in
the Olympic village, US athletes took to Twitter to protest a rule forbidding
them from appearing in ads for anyone other than official sponsors of the
Games.
It's amazing how much trouble can be stirred up in 140 characters.
More reading on this topic: http://www.boston.com/sports/other_sports/olympics/articles/2012/07/31/olympic_level_social_media_growing_pains/
2 comments:
Twitter is known as a venue to exercise free speech, however some recent events raise some questions. The Twitter account of a British reporter was briefly suspended due to his criticism of the NBC coverage of the games. Though both NBC and Twitter have apologized it brings up interesting questions around Twitter's corporate relationships and how those might effect its reputation as a supporter of free speech. As social media tries to increase revenue generation with advertising and corporate relationships, it also runs the risk of losing its original appeal.
Today's WSJ article (http://on.wsj.com/MwV0ej) discusses several of the issues the Olympics is facing in an ever-present social world. In addition to Sharon's comment above, Twitter was criticized for telling Mr. Gary Zenkel, NBC Olympic's President, that the journalist posted his e-mail address. Twitter later apologized for alerting NBC of the Tweet, saying "We should not and cannot be in the business of proactively monitoring and flagging content, no matter who the user is. We want to apologize for the part of this story that we did mess up."
Look forward to seeing how the rest of the games play out.
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