Olympic Game Boost the Use of Instagram

（This blog post has also been posted on AU　ＭＡ　Ｓｏｃｉａｌ　Ｍｅｄｉａ　ｂｌｏｇ．）

During the 2012 Summer Olympics, millions of photos have been shared via Instagram. The popular mobile app got 50 million registers at the end of this April, increased three times when it started with just 15 million users. According to data released on the July, Instagram gained more than 80 million users and 4 billion photos. Now, after the Olympic Games, Instagram probably will get more subscribed users.

Let’s look at what Instagram achieved during the game. According to VenueSeen, 650,000 photos have been uploaded with hashtag #Olympics; 263,000 photos has been uploaded with hashtag #london 2012. The most popular venue people used Instagram is Olympic Stadium; the next one is Wembley Stadium, the Olympic soccer spot, following with the Basketball Arena.

IOC enacted series of restrictions on this game. Athletes and other accredited persons are encouraged to do personal posts on social media channels in a first-person, diary-type format.. But they cannot post during competitions, cannot shot videos. Spectators are allowed to take photos and videos, but not allowed to post any video.  

Here is one example. “Participants and other accredited persons can post still photographs taken within Olympic Venues for personal use. It is not permitted to commercialise, sell or otherwise distribute
these photographs.”

It seems like that IOC and TV networks, however, can do nothing with the popularity of the social media.  During the game, spectators use this popular app to share their favorite snaps, journalists use it to report. After the game, the teams and individual participants use it to celebrate their victories. The whole world can see another side of Olympic via athletes phones.
Apart from the data listed above, the obvious evidence can be 27,000 photos shared with the  #michaelphelps hashtag, 650,000 photos have been posted with the #olympics hashtag, while more than 263,000 have been uploaded with the #london2012 hashtag.

Taking Olympic game as a transcendent experience, instagram will maintain popular in the future competitions, meetings, and other public activities. Based on the effect of social media tool like instagram, Olympic game is becoming increasingly  democratic and publicly. Who will be the next? How can we take advantage of the social media tools  in the future sports game?  Allowing such social media tools in other sport competitions like MLB or NHL brings the competition itself positive or negative one? These questions should be publicly discussed in the future.

(Infographic on the use of instagram of Olympic game)

Resource:
1. Instagram Passes 50 Million Users, Adds 5 million a week
http://mashable.com/2012/04/30/instagram-50-million-users/

2. How Instagram is Winning Gold at the 2012 Olympics
http://mashable.com/2012/08/11/instagram-olympics-infographic/

3. Terms and Conditions of Ticket Purchase
http://www.tickets.london2012.com/purchaseterms.html

4. IOC Social Media, Blogging and Internet Guidelines for participants
and other accredited persons at the London 2012 Olympic Games
http://www.olympic.org/Documents/Games_London_2012/IOC_Social_Media_Blogging_and_Internet_Guidelines-London.pdf

5. London Olympics: How the IOC Controls Social Media
http://www.mobiledia.com/news/157205.html

Olympic Game Boost the Use of Instagram

（This blog post has also been posted on AU　ＭＡ　Ｓｏｃｉａｌ　Ｍｅｄｉａ　ｂｌｏｇ．）

During the 2012 Summer Olympics, millions of photos have been shared via Instagram. The popular mobile app got 50 million registers at the end of this April, increased three times when it started with just 15 million users. According to data released on the July, Instagram gained more than 80 million users and 4 billion photos. Now, after the Olympic Games, Instagram probably will get more subscribed users.

Let’s look at what Instagram achieved during the game. According to VenueSeen, 650,000 photos have been uploaded with hashtag #Olympics; 263,000 photos has been uploaded with hashtag #london 2012. The most popular venue people used Instagram is Olympic Stadium; the next one is Wembley Stadium, the Olympic soccer spot, following with the Basketball Arena.

IOC enacted series of restrictions on this game. Athletes and other accredited persons are encouraged to do personal posts on social media channels in a first-person, diary-type format.. But they cannot post during competitions, cannot shot videos. Spectators are allowed to take photos and videos, but not allowed to post any video.  

Here is one example. “Participants and other accredited persons can post still photographs taken within Olympic Venues for personal use. It is not permitted to commercialise, sell or otherwise distribute
these photographs.”

It seems like that IOC and TV networks, however, can do nothing with the popularity of the social media.  During the game, spectators use this popular app to share their favorite snaps, journalists use it to report. After the game, the teams and individual participants use it to celebrate their victories. The whole world can see another side of Olympic via athletes phones.
Apart from the data listed above, the obvious evidence can be 27,000 photos shared with the  #michaelphelps hashtag, 650,000 photos have been posted with the #olympics hashtag, while more than 263,000 have been uploaded with the #london2012 hashtag.

Taking Olympic game as a transcendent experience, instagram will maintain popular in the future competitions, meetings, and other public activities. Based on the effect of social media tool like instagram, Olympic game is becoming increasingly  democratic and publicly. Who will be the next? How can we take advantage of the social media tools  in the future sports game?  Allowing such social media tools in other sport competitions like MLB or NHL brings the competition itself positive or negative one? These questions should be publicly discussed in the future.

(Infographic on the use of instagram of Olympic game)

Resource:
1. Instagram Passes 50 Million Users, Adds 5 million a week
http://mashable.com/2012/04/30/instagram-50-million-users/

2. How Instagram is Winning Gold at the 2012 Olympics
http://mashable.com/2012/08/11/instagram-olympics-infographic/

3. Terms and Conditions of Ticket Purchase
http://www.tickets.london2012.com/purchaseterms.html

4. IOC Social Media, Blogging and Internet Guidelines for participants
and other accredited persons at the London 2012 Olympic Games
http://www.olympic.org/Documents/Games_London_2012/IOC_Social_Media_Blogging_and_Internet_Guidelines-London.pdf

5. London Olympics: How the IOC Controls Social Media
http://www.mobiledia.com/news/157205.html

Morgan Spurlock: The Greatest Documentary of Branding

As a playful and also mindful documentary director, Morgan Spurlock always immersed himself into “seemingly horrible situations” to engage and entertain his audience. Lived in the prison, worked in copper mine, and ate only burgers for three month. As if that is not enough, now he wants to do something challenging, a quirky but meaningful film, to engage audience and to inspire thoughts.

In his speech on Ted in February, 2011, Morgan talked about how he was trying to get several corporate companies working with him on a movie named the Greatest Movie Ever Sold. Only 17 companies wanted to take a risk to be the brand partners. Spurlock’s crazy idea shocked most companies that he pitched the idea to. His idea about this movie was based on transparency.

He wanted to make a film about product placement, marketing and advertising, which he named the Greatest Movie Ever Sold. It would consist of branding from the very beginning to the end. What a fabulous opportunity for these brands to put themselves in the public. However, when he pitched this idea to tons of CEO and marketing managers from companies like Skincare Marketing and Octagon, the majority of the responses he got were “no, we’re not interested.” “We don’t have budget there.” “Well, turn down the camera, we probably can talk. And the answer to your question is no.” Because Spurlock told them his goal of the film is transparency.

This quirky situation may inspire people to think why these companies refused to be the sponsor. There are millions of brands hoping to get the third party ink to tell their impressive brand stories. The difference is that this crazy guy said he was planning to tell the real stories, to talk about how we’re advertised and marketed to. He would explore the impact that has on us in this film. When he frankly and boldly stated his ideas, it was no surprise to see the shocked expression from most executives’ faces. Moreover, he didn’t provide any specific script about the movie. He wanted to follow all the truth and real information and produce a transparent documentary on brand stories.

Based off of what the branding agency, Olson Zaltman, said, the reason was that the brands feared to take risks. They didn’t want to expose the very truth to the masses, which probably would put themselves in trouble. “What if there is something negative showing up?” “What if my impressive brand story does not match with that in the film, or probably the one in real life?”

So, let’s clap for the 17 brands took this idea. Even though no one knows how Morgan would shot this movie, they just decided to take the risk and let their customers learn the real side of their products and their companies. It was more than what Morgan said that these people were embracing the risk and uncertainty. These companies were trying to be transparent to the customers and to present their sincerity to the audience. They were open to love, criticism, complement and any other sentiment. We must appreciate their sincerity no matter how the final movie will be. I believe with the 17 sincere risk-takers and the courage to break down any pretention but only bring us transparency, it must be one of the greatest movies we ever seen.

(Author: This blog post has also been published on AU MA Social Media.)

Make Your Employee Embrace Social Media: A Live Case Study #domosocial

There is a brand new business intelligence company named Domo doing a social media experiment recently. It required all the employees to expand their social networks online. This is an interesting experiment that can help us think about employee’s adoption of social media further.

The program started on May 8 and continued eight weeks. During that period, every employee should complete different tasks to win 29 badges. These tasks included creating a blog post, maintaining Twitter updates and Facebook posts, and creating three circles in Google+. The program is mandated to each employee and the reward is rich — excellent employees can get bonus and the whole company can get one day off from work if they meet the collective goals.

As what Domo’s CEO and Chairman of the Board, Josh James mentioned in his blog, this experiment is to engage all the company into social media, and learn customer’s experience on Domo’s products.

“This will help us develop a better product, understand the viral nature of web offerings more effectively, assist in getting the Domo brand out there and enable better customer conversations.”

This program is risky and bold, but the company also learned some metrics and increased their reach. From the infographic, it reached 152,160 total followers and gained 50848 true reach. Domo’s influential scored 36 on Klout, a tool that can test the influence of one’s Twitter handle or Facebook profile.

It is a smart strategy to

–          1. build up the reputation for a brand new company

–          2. test and practice employee’s social EQ

–          3. communicate with customers and get their feedbacks

–          4.improve the products and make them more customerized

What can we learn from this experiment? Domo showed us, currently, social networking is both online and offline. Business is switching to the social media networks. To companies that haven’t expanding their influences via social media, it is a propriate time to consider social media performances a more important element in marketing.

What to question? Privacy is definitely the most critical issue in this experiement. Actually, some employees complained that using social media to network negatively affacted their personal lives. People may social during work and after work. But no one wants to be tracked and connected every single moment. Making a personal social media account public is equal to expose a private life to the public, which can cause serious social pressure on these employees. In addition, sparing lots of time on social media can be a distraction from work. Obviously, the company had better come up with a set of rules and strategies to avoid these effects, for example, seperating work handle and private handle for each employee on Twitter or limit time spending on Facebook updating.

Attached is an infographic that listed the impacts of #domosocial experiment. You can also find the whole process via www.domo.com/social .

Reference

Josh James: Let the Games Begin! Welcome to the # domosocial Experiment

http://www.domo.com/social/2012/05/08/let-the-games-begin-welcome-to-the-domosocial-experiment/

Steve Olenski: A Transpatent, Live Case Study of a Company Going Social

http://www.business2community.com/social-media/a-transparent-live-case-study-of-a-company-going-social-0219153

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