I remember watching Michael Phelps during the summer Olympics and during one of his interviews, he mentioned that he’s received hundreds of thousands of friend requests on his Facebook profile. This moment was my first awakening of the impact that social media is having on a global level.
It seems that every segment of our society is being forced to integrate into the “social graph” – as Facebook calls it – which is the network of connections and relationships between people on Facebook.
On a much larger level, the social graph can be used to describe all people connecting via the web, whether via mobile and data devices, laptops, and computers.
The Social Graph At Work
This phenomena has finally found it’s way to the higherarchy of The Olympic Games. And from everything I’m reading, the Olympic organizers and managers are seeing social media as a way to revolutionize the exposure of the Olympics worldwide and get more people watching and engaged in the Games like never before.
From the Olympics perpesctive, the social graph is going to unfold during The Olympics with or without them. And since copyright infringements are difficult to contain when it comes to “citizens journalism”, the Olympics desires to be a leader and facilitator of the social media – instead of being seen as an organization that is trying to suppress, control, and own.
Citizen Journalism
Citizen journalism is now taking on a whole new role then. If The Olympics is going to embrace Twitter, Facebook, and blogging, and help facilitate citizens in producing content built around the games, then the result – from their perspective – is more viewers and exposure, which ultimately leads to advertising revenue opportunities.
These new advertising opportunities are complete shift in the way The Olympics has ever ran things in the past. Never before has such a profound opportunity existed for both The Olypics, the athletes, and the citizens and fans to all come together and connect, share, and embrace the games – again, the social graph at its finest.