Today is the day! Tonight at 8:00 pm, the 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony will begin! I LOVE the Olympics, and the Opening Ceremony is almost always a family event in our house. This year's games are going to be completely different from the 2008 games as more and more people have jumped on various social media platforms. There is a prediction that the 2012 Summer games will catapult Twitter into the stratosphere as new users sign up for no other reason than to follow their favorite athletes and keep up with results in real time. I don't care what anyone tells you—there is no faster way to get ANY news results than on Twitter.
But ...
Man cannot live on Twitter alone (well, some of us could ...), so we thought it would be fun to talk about a few of the different ways you can follow along with the
They OC has created one central location for ALL of their social media efforts called the Olympic Athletes' Hub. Here you will find everything in one neat little package.
Of course, there are the dozens of iPhone and iPad apps available. The two that I have downloaded (so far) are London 2012, Results, and NBC Olympics. I like the results app so that I can get the information that I need quickly and without too much clutter. The design is simple, and I can easily find which sport I want the latest information on. The NBC one is to have a different aspect, and it's full of video, interviews, and supposedly—live stream. There is some issue with the last piece as it seems to be a bit choppy and inconsistent. Added bonus—the ability to interact with other fans while in the app.
Storify - NBC has partnered up with Storify to create an ongoing story board to make it a one-stop place for updates from a variety of sources. If you haven't tried Storify, you should. It's such a great way to cull information from many different places and create your own "story."
Twitter - The official Olympic hashtag is #London2012. If you want to follow it on Twitter from your phone or online, just enter this hashtag and you will have a wealth of information in one stream. If you're tweeting about the Olympics, make sure you use it as well! If you're looking for a list of athletes that are on Twitter, visit this link, and you will find a list of Olympian Twitter accounts that have been verified. Many of them are very active on Twitter, and what better way to feel like you're part of the games than following the very Olympians that are IN the game!
YouTube has a dedicated channel for the games where you can find behind-the-scenes coverage as well as the lighter side of video coverage. Within the main channel are several other channels to also check out including various Hang Outs with the athletes!
Love Pinterest? Lucky you! You can pin your favorite Olympic moments from the official Olympic Board! There you will find pins on London, the Olympic venues, and every (major) sport has it's own board! Pinners unite!
Tumblr? Got it. This is a visually-rich site for the Olympics and one of the pages is appropriately title "Faces of Olympians."
Looking for your Instagram fix? Got you covered! I found that using GramFeed is one way to look at the photos from the Olympics online (as opposed to IN Instagram).
Of course there is the obligatory Facebook page. If there is going to be one main hub, you know this one will be the one.
Google+ wasn't left out—especially with the Hang Out and YouTube connection! If you want the chance to catch an actual Hang Out, then you'll definitely want to put this one on your check list.
And of course—let's not forget the good old-fashioned television! What do you think will be your favorite social media stream to keep up with the Olympics?
