2012 will be the first real “Social Olympics” where you can follow events and athletes on Facebook and keep up to date with what’s really going on.

The International Olympics Committee 2012 has been working with Facebook for the last 18 months on a dedicated page for athletes to communicate with fans with personalized event updates, wins, photos and status updates https://www.facebook.com/olympics. There’s also a historical timeline with information and photos of past Olympic Games.

Stringent restrictions have been put in place to protect sponsors’ brands and broadcasting rights, affecting every athlete, Olympics ticket holder and business in the UK. So, although millions of people will tune in to watch the sporting event, Facebook will not run any advertising on these pages either.

Realistically, with hundreds of events and so many athletes to watch, TV broadcasters and newspapers can only use the highlights, whereas the Facebook Olympics page and other social media sites will deliver a much more comprehensive picture of events and athletes, as long as they choose to participate. So far 250 athletes are on site out of 10,500.

So even if you can’t actually go to the Olympics in London, you can still take part.

Roll on 27^th July!

Source: Techcrunch.com

Flick Henderson - Brand Strategy Director

After many years in several of Ireland's top traditional advertising agencies, Flick switched to digital in 2000 and built a team of amazing tradigital creatives in ICAN. After 10 great years as Creative Director, she moved into Strategy and Insights and handed over creative to her talented and innovative protégées. She has received many traditional and digital awards over the years including ICAD, Golden Spiders and Digital Media Awards. She swims most days and travels as much as possible.