The social media Olympics – gold medal winners and losers
It’s the final countdown to the London 2012 Olympics and so there is a distinct sporting theme to this week’s social media round up from Siren Communications.
Football’s social media own goals
This week the Sun reported that the FA is furious with footballers who are making headlines for their twitter postings. And how did the FA try to manage this social media challenge? They sent a good old fashioned letter to all Premier and Football league managers and club officials. Footballing stars have been warned they face match bans or fines for offensive tweets. If you want to see some of what prompted the letter, follow @rioferdy5 on twitter.
Beckham makes the Games
Paralympic sponsor Sainsbury’s this week launched an online game based on blind football featuring the Paralympic ambassador, David Beckham. The game is promoted instore, on social media and via a Channel 4 – the official Paralympics broadcaster – microsite. Players must rely on sound to react and play. As well as revelling in the only chance of enjoying David Beckham on the pitch during London 2012, you also get to marvel at his moustache in the opening video, which is a whole other social media trend in itself.
Get ahead of the Games – online
London 2012 is being billed as the first social media Olympics with thousands of competing athletes expected to talk about the Games and their experiences on social networking sites. Facebook has created a dedicated London 2012 portal to allow users to quickly connect with their favourite sporting stars, and you can also talk to the head of sport at Twitter as well as connect with many athletes directly. However, athletes have asked to follow quite draconian social media, online and blogging guidelines – although take a look at this image gallery and spot the rule flouts.
And finally…
If you’re an avid iPad user and fan enjoy these pictures of an early iPad prototype. The shots have emerged as part of the evidence in Apple’s court battle with Samsung.
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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