London 2012 Olympics: it will be a Twitter Olympics

Chei Amlani

Currently working on the London 2012 Olympics coverage online, the chance of a lifetime. Also on Twitter @cheiamlani

By Chei Amlani Olympics Last updated: April 13th, 2011

No, there will notbe an actual Twitter Olympics. No gold medals for fastest tweet or long-distance tweeting events, throwing your tweets the furthest, or a Twitpic triathlon. But if you have yet to catch up on the latest digital trend, have reservations about it’s usefulness, don’t know why you’d use it and don’t understand any of the aforementioned terms, then read further. As trends go, and for the uninitiated trending is the way Twitter marks out the most popular or talked about topics, this is one any sport and Olympic fan really shouldn’t ignore. Twitter is undoubtedly one of the best ways to follow sport and major sporting events. Come London 2012 it could be indispensable.

Let’s get the cynicism out of the way first. Twitter is easy to dismiss. Shakespeare might have defined a tweet as a “tale told by an idiot” and as “signifying nothing”. And he’d have been right, or at least  sufficiently under the limit of 140 characters that each Tweet must contain to be published to make his point. But it’s unlikely his entire works would have found a home there.

This is not a place for long-form content. It’s little snippets of information (referred to as micro-blogging) about people and their lives. Harnessing the shared, communicatory ethos of the web, it distills the notion that ‘everyone has a book in them’ down to ‘maybe just a few tweets’. So yes, the critics will tell you, not entirely incorrectly, that there is plenty of uninteresting stuff out there and plenty of people who feel the need to let everyone know every aspect of their dull, impaired, self-obsessed existences, perfect for the ‘Internet generation’ and their short attention spans -  (see also Facebook). It’s a sign of our impending doom and the fall of our civilisation.

But, as with much on the Internet, accessing it and using it is free. It has also become phenomenally popular and with that have come the usual questions – how will it make money, what is the goal, will someone buy it, what is it doing to our brains…but despite some of these fundamentals being unanswered it seems all the world is there, trying desperately to grab a moment of your precious time.

‘Social media’ is the buzz word, it’s a place where every company, organisation, individual and government can reach out to the world and get their message across. We are soon to have a so-called Twitter Tsar (on an annual salary of £142,000) and the emergence of companies trying, in essence, to sell you things or using their ambassadors to influence you into ‘following them’ (this is how you keep track of another person on Twitter) demonstrates that this is not just a space for the individual. It also lays claim to a moral neutrality. That is, it is just a platform and not responsible for the content on that platform. So it has been used across the world as a communication tool in countries where freedom of speech has been stifled but also effectively used by rioters to organise meeting locations and stay one step ahead of the police.

So what has this got to do with the Olympics? Well, sports stars, organisations and sponsors haven’t been shy to take up the gauntlet. London 2012, the IOC, the BOA, Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt, Bradley Wiggins, Adidas, Nike, Beth Tweddle, Sky, the Press Association, the BBC all use it throughout the day to flag content they have published, update information to their followers and break stories.

Every media organisation has their own official feeds while many of their journalists and staff also have individual accounts. The Tweets are published in newspapers, on live blogging services and regularly make the headlines as it gives celebrities and sports stars direct access to the public before a press officer can grab their thoughts and shape them into less damaging opinions.

Tottenham’s defeat at the hands of Madrid in the Champions League last week was the perfect example. The trending topics focused around the goalscorers and the team’s performance. You would have had access to immediate news and statistics from reporters at the game – which subs were warming up and what the atmosphere was like.

You would also be aware that you weren’t the only one questioning the quality of Ray Wilkins’ commentary on Sky. Sky themselves were most likely to have been acutely aware of this. Twitter is, as much as anything, a great way of providing customer feedback. And when the reason for Aaron Lennon’s late, late omission from the team was questioned, young Aaron himself took the ‘Tweetosphere’ to set the record straight.
As the Telegraph reported recently, the service has more than 200 million registered accounts, but fifty per cent of all tweets are generated generated by only 20,000 ‘elite’ users’. And here’s where it can prove really useful for the Olympic and sports fan. Invest a little time in the process, or better still get someone to do it for you.

Sign-up, log-on, and find the people you want to follow (using the simple search tool, or the relevant websites normally have a link encouraging you to follow them on Twitter). You don’t need to discriminate. If you think they might be slightly interesting, hit the green follow button. You’ll be recommended people as well. Download the app onto your phone if you have one smart enough and when an event happens you won’t miss a thing.

It’s not just a first-class news wire and breaking news service, but a fantastic way to access genuinely interesting content, features and interviews as links to further, relevant, content are very much part of the Twitter experience. And the ability to do it online and on your phone while also following the coverage of events on television (as well as the Telegraph’s excellent minute-by-minute blogs) makes the sporting event at home arguably much richer. You may even want to turn off the commentary.  And if an event of note has occurred, or a relevant piece is published, someone is likely to Tweet this. Across multiple publishers.

Twitter becomes the gateway for following your topics of interest, also making it equally easy to ‘unfollow’ people when you lose interest.  Not only that, but it is comfortingly easy to just skip past the Tweets you don’t care for and, if you really can’t resist, to message the people who are Tweeting. It makes a persuasive argument, even for luddites and cynics.

By the summer of 2012, it may all have changed. Twitter may have been replaced by something else laying claim to the digital zeitgeist, it may have destroyed itself in an attempt to cash in on it success. You may also have questions about how your personal data is being used. But come the London 2012 Games, where the amount of information published will be  immense and trying to stay on top of what is happening when will be extremely difficult, you could do much better than log onto Twitter, ignore your concerns, and join the crowd.

It’s simple to sign up, easy to use, and because you don’t need to contribute it doesn’t have to impact on your life to the extent other services do. It won’t necessarily make you happier, wiser or richer. It won’t necessarily change the world. But for sports fans, passionate about their sports and reading more on their sports, staying in touch with the competitors and the organisations and the latest news there isn’t, as yet, a better all-round service.

We’ve put together a list of people we are following our Games. Follow this link http://twitter.com/teleolympics/lists/london2012 (sign-up if you haven’t already) and get started.