NEW YORK -- The London Olympics may well be remembered as the event that drove home the power of social media -- partly to the chagrin but mostly to the benefit of NBC, which controlled images of the Games in the United States.
Twitter estimates that there were more than 50 million tweets about the Olympics, at a pace of 80,000 per minute after Jamaica's Usain Bolt won the gold medal in the 200-meter sprint. Facebook saw the number of fans of Olympic athletes soar: American gymnast Gabby Douglas had 14,358 followers on July 27 and 540,174 less than two weeks later.All of the activity pumped up interest in the Games. NBC executives privately anticipated that the London Games would have a smaller audience than the Beijing Olympics of 2008. Instead, the network's prime-time audience averaged 31.5 million people a night through Friday, up 12 percent from Beijing.Many factors surely drove interest, like compelling competition and the amount of coverage available on TV and online. Maybe a recession-weary world wanted a collective, uplifting experience. But the explosion of social media is the one big change in the media landscape that would explain the increased ratings, said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project.Facebook had 100 million users four years ago and has 900 million now."It was the great unknown," said Mark Lazarus, chairman of NBC Sports. "We believed it would be a positive for us, and people would dialogue about the Games even if they knew the outcomes. But every day in social media is a learning experience, not just for us but for every business. Yeah, I think maybe we did underestimate it."Usage estimates are still coming in, but it appears the U.S. was not alone. The IOC estimates some 900 million people worldwide saw the Olympics opening ceremony. Viewership in Britain was more than the BBC expected. The number of Facebook followers for German gymnast Marcel Nguyen leaped from 7,567 to 179,441 in less than two weeks, according to Wildfire Interactive."Sports events are inherently social," said Justin Osofsky, Facebook's director of platform partnerships and operations. "We're never fans alone. We root together, celebrate together and sometimes commiserate together."NBC announced partnerships with both Facebook and Twitter before the Games began. Their tangible impact was somewhat limited -- superfluous prime-time segments with Ryan Seacrest -- but the intangible impact of increasing visibility for the event is more important. People were more engaged and watched more as a result, said chief NBC researcher Alan Wurtzel.One out of five Olympic viewers in the U.S. watched more than one screen at the same time, with tablets or smartphones hooked into the Internet or social media, he said.Television began as an inherently social activity, since most families could afford only one set and everyone gathered in the living room to watch. But over the years family members retreated to different rooms to watch different TVs. Now, with social media, people are making connections again with others watching the same thing on TV, even if it's someone on the other side of the country or world.Cheers or Seinfeld used to be water cooler TV, but series television is now too fragmented. More often, special events like the Olympics are filling the desire for shared experiences. Social media often supplements traditional media instead of replacing it, Rainie said.According to a Pew survey, 76 percent of Americans who watched NBC's coverage rated it as excellent or good. Nearly 8 in 10 Americans followed some of the Olympics either on TV or in some other fashion, said the survey, taken Aug. 2-5. NBC live-streamed every competition through its Olympic website, a process that required customers to prove they were cable or satellite customers, and nearly one in 10 Americans registered devices.Have more to add? News tip? Tell us
