London 2012: the 'Socialympics'

Dubbed the first “Socialympics”, the upcoming weeks will see the social networks buzzing as people from around the world follow the Olympic action from multiple devices, across multiple platforms.

Here's a look at some of the social media services that will be available.

The world's most popular social network, with over 900 million users, has created an Olympic portal for the games. Through this portal, users can easily find and follow the pages of athletes (which include the timeline of their careers), teams and specific sporting events.

Facebook has also entered into a partnership with NBC for the games, which will see the television network push viewers to Facebook and its NBC Olympics page, while Facebook will provide NBC with exclusive insights into the online conversation surrounding the Olympics.

Apart from the official accounts for London 2012 and the IOC itself, Twitter users will also be able to have unprecedented direct access to their favourite athletes via the micro-blogging site. Athletes are, however, bound by the IOC's rules of social media usage throughout the games.

The rules have been criticised for being excessive, and are believed to be in place, at least in part, to avoid athletes disseminating information that would otherwise be covered by Olympic broadcast partners.

Despite the restrictions, British Olympic Association chief executive Andy Hunt has said due to the popularity of the platform for live events, the 2012 Olympics will be the "Twitter Games" - provided people think carefully about what they say.

The Athlete's Hub is an initiative of the IOC, which aggregates 2 000 authenticated Olympians' Twitter and Facebook updates. The hub also uses gamification elements to encourage the public to get involved, with users earning badges for following athletes. Online Q&As “live from the village” are also included in the hub and aggregated from platforms like Twitter.

The IOC is also making use of some of the smaller social platforms, in order to cover all bases and audiences. According to the IOC, over 400 Olympians are on Instagram and the IOC's own account has been gaining followers rapidly (currently at about 29 000). There will also be four official pages for the Olympics on Tumblr. These include Olympics, Faces of Olympians, Olympic Fashion and Olympic Moments (featuring Getty Images from the games).

Fans can also use Foursquare to check-in to venues, and the chance to win tickets (with the IOC giving away two tickets a day throughout the games).

The BBC.com has released its own Olympic app available for free on both Android and iOS. The app features Geo IP targeting, in order to deliver relevant headlines to users based on their location. The app also includes daily commentaries, news updates, key events and top stories on all national teams. Content viewed in the app can be shared across the social networks or via e-mail. The BBC will also live-stream events from the Olympics on Facebook; however, this will be limited to users in the UK.

QlikView has also released the “Global Games App”, which users can download for their PCs. The app provides the QlikView Business Discovery Platform to collate and analyse statistics, facts, trends and trivia about the games and national teams from 1896 to present. QlikView SA MD Davide Hanan says the app provides a fun way for users to find meaning in the mass of information available on past competitions.