Social network giant Facebook has devoted a portal dubbed Explore London 2012 to allow fans to “connect with their favourite” athletes at the Olympic Games.
The portal features dedicated pages for athletes and sports in addition to a comprehensive timeline of the competition since the 1800s.
Olypic fans can “like” the athletes’ pages and stay wired into the latest information and news “from inside the games, Facebook said.
The Olympic organizers, International Olympic Committee (IOC), said the portal would form “a social media stadium,” an echo to Facebook’s remark that it hoped the portal would allow the Olympics fans to interact with the athletes unlike in previous Games.
The new technology continues to attract rave reviews with London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games’s (Locog) Alex Balfour saying the Games had found a technology that would allow a rich experience to the Olympics fans across the globe.
Facebook however made it clear it would only allow fans to use the platform to find footage of their favourite athletes although some contents would be “geo-targeted,” as some would be unavailable to some fans in certain regions of the world.
The portal has however included stringent measures that will control what the athletes can post, or what contents can be published.
This makes it unique as it features no advertisement compared to other Facebook faces.
This is since the Games already has sponsorship agreements in place, which could conflict with other advertisements that may appear on the networking site, says The Next Web.
The ITProPortal however points out that since the new portal is not an official sponsorship, it is not in a position to offer advertisements on the page to benefit Facebook Inc financially.
It also restricts the posting of any video from within the venue of the Olympic, says the ITProPortal.
The BBC had IOC’s Mark Adams say visitors to the Games would be able to post videos and stills, athletes’ activities would be curbed depending on where they are.
Adams added that the IOC would be looking out for any attempted “ambush” marketing as it takes away money from Olympic movement and needs protection.
The new official The Olympic Games page already has more than 2.8 million likes. It features photos from London’s preparations, user polls, and news of the summer games.
Historical pictures reaching as far back as the 1908 London Olympics also characterize the page.
The Facebook portal also currently features links to official Facebook pages for 250 athletes of the more than 10,000 athletes represented on the site, 58 countries and the entire 25 Olympic sports.
Facebook has promised to add additional athlete pages to the portal towards the start of the 2012 Summer Olympics on July 27, Techrunch said.
Earlier this month, Google promised its viewers in parts of Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa HD streams of the Olympic events live on YouTube.
The BBC also said it will offer live streams of the summer’s key sporting events, including the Olympics and Euro 2012.
Facebook’s Olympic integration has been in the works for a year and a half, says the TechCrunch.
