As the overwhelming popularity of social media surges by the day like a tsunami, people all over the globe are taking notice. This week on my show, ‘The Social Scene’, we discussed how leveraging social media is being commonplace within both sports and music festivals.
As this year’s Olympics, which will be taking place in London, is almost in reach with an anticipated start date of July 27, sports fanatics all over the world are sharing their excitement for the upcoming games via social media. In fact, for the first time in history, organizers are forecasting that they will be seeing more tweets, Facebook (News - Alert) posts, videos, and photos to be shared from London than any other sports event in the world.
"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 in a statement. "That's all changed. Here, everyone has all that and will be consuming the games in a different way."
When I took to the streets to see if the integration of social media with the Olympics would prompt less-than-excited potential viewers to tune in, I was answered with the response of, “I don’t necessarily watch the Olympics but I would be more interested in looking into it more.”
Uh huh, just as we expected.
Also, with the NBA Final currently underway (go Heat!) it was revealed that for fans that can’t afford the exorbitant ticket prices of the event, they can still feel part of what is going on by leveraging social media to view almost real-time videos from the court, as well as trending topics currently going on in the actual arena. Just last night, the National Basketball Association also hosted for the first time its very own Social Media Awards, featuring no other than Shaquille O’Neal.
Word on the street was that both Miami and Oklahoma lovers were in favor of using social media to tune it to the very latest in the finals because “it really helps in long term visibility for those that have limited income.”
Closing out the week, I discussed how at the Bonnoroo Music Festival, a four-day event that brings a huge amount of people to Tennessee, concert promoters allowed attendees to use their social media accounts to add likes and interests onto their RFID-enabled wristbands which then acted as their ticket for entry.
One of my lucky interviewees said it best concluding this week’s video stating, “I think that it’s probably a good idea to sort of synch up live events with social media because you get to interact with like-minded people and get an idea of what other people think of the event.”
Be sure to tune in every week to ‘The Social Scene’ or your social life might never be the same!