bapgeek says: For starters, shortformblog, Curling is a Winter Olympic Sport so it’s existence should have little to zero effect on the Summer Games. But yes, it is sad that Wrestling is being dropped from the Summer Olympic Games.
» SFB says: As there are multiple writers on the site and we all write our own opinions, let me be the first to distance myself from Scott and say that I freaking LOVE curling.
However, I also know the IOC runs both the Summer and Winter Olympics, so they do have at least some jurisdiction over one another. But to get back to the main point, replace curling with table tennis. — Ernie @ SFB
IOC leaders dropped wrestling from the Olympic program on Tuesday, a surprise decision that removes one of the oldest Olympic sports from the 2020 Games.
The IOC executive board decided to retain modern pentathlon — the event considered most at risk — and remove wrestling instead from its list of 25 “core sports.”
Not going to lie. We’re kind of disappointed to know that the IOC officially thinks that Curling is a more important sport than one of the original Olympic competitions. Anybody else think this decision needs to be re-examined?
This is just scratching the surface for bad 2012s.
Shockingly, people may have had a worse year than Romney tattoo guy.
A True Champion: Gold medal-winning Olympic wrestler Jeff Blatnick passed away at the age of 55 on Wenesday as the result of cardiopulmonary arrest. Blatnick won his medal during the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles after being diagnosed and treated for Hodgkin’s lymphoma midway through his training period. In recent years, Blatnick has volunteered as a wrestling coach at the school attended by his two children. He is survived by his wife Lori, his son Ian, and his daughter Niki. (Photo via MMA News; ht waterman12053) source
Seventh-inning Pitch: We’re here to serve you, folks. We SFB writers really enjoy writing the longer stories that are most important to you. The Pitch is a chance for all of us to delve a little deeper. Head over to this week’s The Pitch album on Facebook and vote for what story you want to see written slightly more longform-y! Your choices: The media’s coverage of Sarah Palin in comparison to Paul Ryan; a crazy new sci-fi technology developed by Microsoft and the NYPD; the Insane Clown Posse’s insane lawsuit against the FBI; a closer look at Paul Ryan and what makes him so Paul Ryan-y; or what to do with yourself now that the Olympics are over. Oh yeah: Be sure to read last week’s winner, a close-up on Syria. source
2012 London Olympics in tweets
- 50 million tweets in just over two weeks
- Largest spike: 1.2M tweets in the 1st hour of the Opening Ceremony
- Most buzzed about Olympic sport: football (soccer!) with 2.8M tweets
- Most buzzed about athlete: diver Tom Daley from Great Britain with 630k tweets
- Most buzzed about country: the US with 104 medals and 5.4M tweets
(via TweetReach)
How much did you tweet about the Olympics, anyway?
Former Undocumented Immigrant Leo Manzano Wins Silver Olympic Medal for U.S.
On Tuesday, Mexican-born American runner Leo Manzano won a silver medal in the men’s 1,500-meter final, running the fastest time ever by a U.S. athlete at the Games. Manzano, 27, entered the U.S. at the age of 4 without papers, according to LetsRun. He didn’t gain legal residency until 10 years later.
“Silver medal, still felt like I won! Representing two countries USA and Mexico!”, Manzano tweeted shortly after his win. Most of his tweets throughout the Olympics have been in both Spanish and English.
All the feels right now, guise.
Con orgullo, this is your futuro.
Congrats good sir.
![The Olympics and social media: When restrictive brand standards stifle everyone
Hey dudes! Here’s the latest entry in our weekly post series, “The Pitch.” This post, written by SFB editor Ernie Smith, considers the wider ramifications of Twitter’s incident with Guy Adams — particularly its ties to the Olympics’ heavy branding and strict rules. Find Ernie on Twitter over here.
Last week, journalist Guy Adams learned about The Olympics’ corporate influence the hard way. The reporter and blogger for The Independent, who snarked heavily about NBC ahead of the Olympic opening ceremonies, spent much of last week reacting to the fallout around his Twitter account getting suspended. Why did this happen? And why are relatively open social networks suddenly feeling a lot less open in the wake of the Olympics? It all starts with the branding, and an organization that wants to ensure tight control over every aspect. But does that work in today’s era of share-everything social media? ShortFormBlog’s very own Ernie Smith analyzes the the conflict between brand control and social media overzealousness. Read more after the jump.
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Preface: The importance of branding
The hundreds of millions of pounds necessary to organise and stage the Games is being raised by the London 2012 Organising Committee (LOCOG) from the private sector. In return for investing in the Games, we have promised our sponsors and merchandise licensees exclusive rights to use the London 2012 brand.
The London Olympics branding page • Describing the reasons why the event’s branding is extremely strict. The branding page describes a number of extremely strict standards as to which companies and private officials can use the Olympic marks — to the point where a section of the branding guidelines describes whether or not you can plant a version of the rings in your own private garden. Based on this page, we can’t use a picture of the rings on this article, though we can use the word Olympics to our heart’s content. So let’s do so. Here’s the SEO version of our brand guideline conversation: Olympics, London Olympics, London Olympics 2012, London Olympics Sports, London Olympics Branding Guidelines, IOC, Parlympics, Citius Altius Fortius, and so on. See that, LOCOG? You can’t do a thing to us about that sentence, because we’re writing an article! HAHAH! source
Why the tight standards? Money
$17 billion estimated cost of the London Olympic games source
$860M the amount security, thousands of soldiers provided by the British government, will cost
$1.2B the amount Visa predicts consumer spending will rise during the London Olympics
$20B the amount David Cameron believes the games will generate for the country
» And don’t forget the branding and distribution deals: How do they pay for all this stuff? Beyond the public funding, it comes down to sponsorship and broadcasting deals, of course! A number of major brands, from Acer and Panasonic to Visa and McDonald’s, pay a lot of money to be exclusive sponsors of the event. And broadcasting deals, like NBC’s multi-billion-dollar deal, also count for a massive chunk. These two sources — branding and broadcasting — pay for 92 percent of the International Olympic Committee’s funding. So there is a major financial incentive for the IOC to keep the limitations as strict as possible.
And hence, the crackdown …
beatsIf you’re an athlete and you’re spotted wearing a pair of Beats by Dr. Dre headphones, expect to get a stern talking-to over the matter, as Panasonic is the only brand you can use.
friesWant to eat a bag of chips that have nothing to do with a pair of golden arches? Hope you like fish, as Olympic officials are only allowing non-sanctioned chips to be sold with fish. Seriously.
wifiThe wireless access at the Olympic venues? A steep £5.99 for 90 minutes, thanks to a deal BT has. And don’t bring your own wi-fi, because people with detectors will hunt you down.
Where the social networks come in
Try sharing this video on Facebook or another site. Watch what happens. Weird, eh? That’s because, due to restrictions on the content, this video has been blocked from sharing on many sites due to a lack of contracts with NBC Universal. While contract deals such as this one are somewhat common with big media companies, this case seems somewhat bizarre, as NBC doesn’t appear to have anything to do with the making of this video, which was directed by an Olympic swimmer, and other clips on the U.S. Olympic Swimming Team’s page remain shareable. This suggests one thing — The Olympics are such a big deal that those who make deals to carry coverage are willing to bend the rules to win them over. Which leads us to the tale of unlucky, snarky journalist Guy Adams.
Twitter tips off a TV network
We want to apologize for the part of this story that we did mess up. The team working closely with NBC around our Olympics partnership did proactively identify a Tweet that was in violation of the Twitter Rules and encouraged them to file a support ticket with our Trust and Safety team to report the violation, as has now been reported publicly. Our Trust and Safety team did not know that part of the story and acted on the report as they would any other.
A message from Twitter • Apologizing for its handling of the suspension of Guy Adams’ Twitter account, which appears to have been brought on by two factors: One, NBC had an agreement with Twitter to help share content, which led to employees working on that team noticing a comment they may have ignored otherwise; and two, Adams tweeting out the e-mail address of an NBC executive, in apparent violation of Twitter’s rules. After Twitter tipped off NBC, the network requested the account be suspended. An outcry ensued, and eventually both NBC and Twitter relented. Adams now has nearly 20,000 Twitter followers as a result of the notoriety he gained from last week’s incident.
The athletes feel stifled on Twitter, too
Meet Olympic hurdler Dawn Harper. Recently, Harper and a handful of other athletes have taken to Twitter with complaints about “Rule 40,” a restriction in the United Kingdom that limits them from being able to mention their own sponsors during the Olympics, or featuring in advertising around a non-sponsor brand. To give you an example of this in action: Apolo Ohno features prominently in advertising for Subway right now, even though speed skating is a Winter Olympics sport and Subway counts Michael Phelps as one of their spokespeople. That’s because, by this rule in the United Kingdom and by agreement elsewhere, athletes can’t show up in non-sponsor ads during the Olympics. Harper has been among the loudest complainants over this issue.
So, where is the line, anyway?
You don’t want to protect that investment so much that you piss off everyone. You’ve got to keep sensible about it and you’ve got to remember that the moment that you as a brand by protecting your own brand start inhibiting consumer choice and consumer behavior … then that’s when you start risking impacting and affecting your brand.
Edelman Digital Director Matthew Gain • Discussing the issue that the IOC and other Olympic-related groups will face as the Olympics go on. While understanding as to why the IOC would want such control, considering the commercial realities, Gain suggests that by going after small companies or people merely trying to get into the Olympic spirit, they may be doing more harm than good. ”I think if it’s a mum and dad business that’s not really benefiting from the Olympics but getting into the Olympic spirit … that’s probably where you’ve gone a little bit too far.” That probably counts for the commenters and broadcasters, too. source
What we should take from all this
Why did Guy Adams’ Twitter account get suspended? Let’s put it this way: Adams probably screwed up by posting that e-mail address, but his account was noticed (and the situation taken more seriously than it would have been otherwise) because an air of normalcy was created by all these brand agreements, even though they’re anything but normal. When there are so many moving parts and so much protection around a brand and a reputation, what seems absurd to the outside world starts looks normal for someone having to work within these rules. If we could rewrite the Olympics script for 2016 or even 2014, here’s what we’d suggest:
one The Olympics are a important event and one with a huge financial windfall for the host country. But the costs of running the Olympics are so high that the event, sadly, reeks of corporate influence, from NBC to the official brand sponsors. What’s the point where the cost outweighs the benefit?
two Both the Olympics and NBC need to consider the implications of the restrictive culture around the Olympics in 2012 — because it’s feasible to imagine damage to the brand’s reputation in the long run if they don’t loosen their brand standards. Four words: Creative Commons-licensed content.
three The reason people got angry about the Guy Adams situation is because it was a sign Twitter is becoming more corporate and less free. We expect total freedom from our social networks, and no single brand, not even the Olympics, is worth violating that trust. Next time, stay out of the fray, Twitter.
Ernie Smith the editor of ShortFormBlog and a social media journalist for TMG Custom Media. He likes “The Room.” Reach him at @ShortFormErnie.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8contM9Hm1qas8z9o1_500.jpg)
Hey dudes! Here’s the latest entry in our weekly post series, “The Pitch.” This post, written by SFB editor Ernie Smith, considers the wider ramifications of Twitter’s incident with Guy Adams — particularly its ties to the Olympics’ heavy branding and strict rules. Find Ernie on Twitter over here.
Last week, journalist Guy Adams learned about The Olympics’ corporate influence the hard way. The reporter and blogger for The Independent, who snarked heavily about NBC ahead of the Olympic opening ceremonies, spent much of last week reacting to the fallout around his Twitter account getting suspended. Why did this happen? And why are relatively open social networks suddenly feeling a lot less open in the wake of the Olympics? It all starts with the branding, and an organization that wants to ensure tight control over every aspect. But does that work in today’s era of share-everything social media? ShortFormBlog’s very own Ernie Smith analyzes the the conflict between brand control and social media overzealousness. Read more after the jump.
Nothing is going to change. I’m going to wear my hair like this during beam and bar finals. You might as well just stop talking about it.Olympic gold-medal gymanist Gabrielle “Gabby” Douglas • Commenting on a minor controversy that surfaced on the Internet over the weekend, following her history-making, gold-medal winning performance at the 2012 Olympic Games in London. Douglas finds herself at the center of multiple debates after becoming the first African-American woman to earn individual all-around gold in gymnastics — but she’s not getting caught up in the hype. “I don’t think people should be worried about that,” says Gabby, adding, “We’re all champions and we’re all winners. I just say that it’s kind of, a stupid and crazy thought to think about my hair.” source (via • follow)
If Usain Bolt, circa yesterday, ran against the other historic medal winers in the 100 meter race, he would win. In fact, he’d beat the 1896 bronze winner by a full three seconds and ’80s Olympic juggernaut Carl Lewis by three-tenths of a second. The New York Times has an amazing interactive graphic breaking this down in as many ways as humanly possible. Bolt won again in a record-setting race.
Over the last 90 days, the Digg...
#FMMDI (at 30 Rockefeller Plaza)
Thanks. I guess my thoughts are as follows:
1. I think...
Two Months Ago I set out to interview the principal cast...
This guy’s name is Gen. Keith...
“I love the one non-NSA story that made it on the...
obitoftheday asks: I don't know the circumstances of the foreclosure and I won't attempt to figure out Lochte's endorsement deal money and why he can't pay off a home. But why should an Olympic athlete's family get better foreclosure treatment than anyone else? This isn't how "we treat an Olympic champion." This is how banks treat folks who don't pay their mortgage (Id prefer restructuring, personally). I won't feel EXTRA sympathy for Lochte's family because he won medals.
» SFB says: Fair point. To emphasize (not for you, but for other people), that was intended as a cultural comment, not a literal one criticizing the U.S. government. Citi is the one foreclosing, not the U.S. But our culture has made foreclosure a fact of life for many, and it’s unfortunate. — Ernie @ SFB
This is how the United States repays its medal winners. (ht @pbump)
EDIT: Because this clearly got misinterpreted, this was not meant as the U.S. government, but the U.S. as a culture. The cultural climate of the United States made foreclosures a fact of life for many. Especially in Florida, of all places, where foreclosures have in recent years been among the country’s highest. That’s what the comment was intended towards. A single sentence probably wasn’t enough to make that clear. — Ernie @ SFB
![reuters:
The full moon rises through the Olympic Rings hanging beneath Tower Bridge during the London 2012 Olympic Games August 3, 2012. [REUTERS/Luke MacGregor]
MORE PHOTOS: Full moon rises at Tower Bridge
For fans of serendipity.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m87lewdBU61qmaoalo1_500.jpg)
The full moon rises through the Olympic Rings hanging beneath Tower Bridge during the London 2012 Olympic Games August 3, 2012. [REUTERS/Luke MacGregor]
MORE PHOTOS: Full moon rises at Tower Bridge
For fans of serendipity.
Neil deGrasse Tyson tweets about what the Olympics would be like on Mars, doing the best coverage of the games so far.
Dear Olympics - Please replace every last one of your uninteresting, incompetent commentators with Neil deGrasse Tyson.
This would be infinitely more watchable.
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