Social Media Comes to the Olympics and Twitter might just win the Gold!

It's Friday morning here in Vermont. It's soggy and grey but there is an excitement in the air. It's anticipation, it's the knowledge that the one sporting mega event in history that I actually enjoy watching on TV is coming. Yep...it's the Olympics! In Beijing. Wow!

Would you like to know what the opening ceremonies are like? Right now? Live? Before we get them here locally (cause they don't happen until Friday NIGHT).

Just go to http://search.twitter.com/ and search for #080808 (get it? It's the date!).

Right now I know that the opening ceremony celebrates Chinese history, inventions (gunpowder, paper, compass and tea), that the commentators are terrible, the fireworks are amazing and that those of us who are NOT Chinese will have a hard time getting the story behind the full production. I also know,thanks to Blogger and Tweeter Rohit Bhargava that the first non-Chinese person to appear is Sarah Brightman who sings (according to the other tweets it's quite um...piercing). And I also know that the athletes will be marching in alpha order according to the local language which is Mandarin...so it's not what you'll expect.

It's a global Twitter with many languages BUT...they've got that covered too over at the Twitter Search -- there's a great little option to "translate" into English.

So we have this Twitter stream where people from all over the world are commenting on everything about the ceremony from the production itself to the commentators to the technical difficulties of being able to load the website of cctvolympics.com and cctvolympics.cn.

During the actual competition I can only imagine how this will work. I wonder how many news organizations are paying attention?

I wonder if NBC is paying attention?

I checked out their website at http://www.nbcolympics.com/index.html and they've got all sorts of things going on -- they've got mobile so I can get mobile alerts (hmmm...my twitter can come in on my phone and it's MUCH more interesting), and there seems to be a blog going on but the only way to find THAT is to watch the intro videos and look for the tiny print "blog" -- or do a search or look through the site to find SOMETHING. The one nice feature is the localization feature.

Why no social media links? Because they can't control it I bet. Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. Way to innovate there NBC! Thank goodness I have access to CBC out of Canada. They aren't rock'n the social media either, BUT at least I can find their blogs by clicking on the tab at the top!

If you look closely at the image below NBC is on top and CBC is on the bottom you can see that there is actually a "blog" link on the CBC banner. Not so for NBC.

Meanwhile our own Burlington Free Press is running a blog by Essex, Vt., native Carissa Gump who is a weightlifter. Those local ties to the games are always cool. I wonder if they'll set up a Twitter stream for during her competition?

So because of the preview, I'll watch tonight and see if I agree with the tweets in my commentary!

By the way, this is but one piece of some of the amazing social media that is going on. There's a whole different level from SPONSORS. Check out this blog post from ReadWriteWeb that shows examples of what McDonalds, Lenovo, Coke and Pepsi are doing with consumer generated content and social media to engage with athletes, customers and their brands. I'll be using this one in my classes for sure.

Finally, check out this "mashup" of the different social media from photos to tweets to blogs etc. at http://tag080808.appspot.com/. If you include tag080808 in any of YOUR posts, you'll be part of the timeline of connection during these games.