2012 Olympics: The Social Games

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has declared the 2012 Olympics held in London the “social games” whereby spectators, fans, families, friends and teammates can participate through social media, texting, blogs and good old-fashioned email.

Get your smartphone, tablet and laptop fully charged and get ready for an onslaught of following, liking and sharing of athletes you likely don’t know along with their international fans of every language.

No more remote on my lap; there’s no room! I will have too many e-comm devices buzzing and blinking on my lap and vying for my attention to watch the actual sport itself. The IOC has taken social media participation very seriously by establishing IOC Social Media, Blogging and Internet Guidelines.

How interesting you make these Olympics Games depends on your satisfaction level of how deep you want to immerse yourself into the social media aspect of watching sports. NBC Sports network and the official NBC Olympics websites have their own Facebook and Twitter feeds. TEAM USA really goes the distance with a micro site for news, photos, videos and links to the Facebook page and Twitterfeed for every one of the 38 sports TEAM USA is participating in, even Field Hockey. (I will be following @USSailing Team).

And if that doesn’t keep you busy, many of the renown participating athletes as well as former Olympian medal winners will be tweeting. By the time these games are over, you will be as exhausted and euphoric as the athletes themselves.

Here’s a partial list to get you started:

NBC Network @NBCOlympics

TEAM USA: @USOlympic

TEAM USA US Sailing: @USSailing Team (Other sports are patterned similarly. Visit their website to find team pages and Twitter handles.)

Athlete Jordan Burroughs: @alliseeisgold (Go toMashable for their Top 25 athletes to follow.)

It took great insight, drive, effort and insistence across geo-political borders by the IOC to create a social media mandate like this. No doubt, the driving force was to deepen the level of engagement with these games by enhancing the spectator experience.

@strass