31 October 2012. Mark Hillary talking at FIERGS in Porto Alegre, Brazil, about the use of social media during the London Olympic games in 2012.

1. FIERGS: IndústriaCreativa
Mark Hillary
Cobertura dos
JogosOlímpicosPelas
MidiasSociais
Porto Alegre: 31/10/2012

2. Mark Hillary… writer?
•9 books on technology
&globalisation
•London Olympic blogger
•Blog for Reuters, Huffington Post
•Teach MBA at LSBU
•Shortlisted UK blogger of the year
2009/2011
•Advisor on content, social
media, publishing… itdecs.com

3. London 2012
?
What was the impact
of social media on the
Olympic games and
what can we learn
from it?

4. Beijing 2008?
•iPhone still only months old
• 3G enabled phones fairly rare
•Facebook hit 100m users in Aug 2008
• 200,000 active Twitter users, 3m tweets / day
• Chinese govt controls on social media
• No photo-sharing tools like Instagram
• Olympic experience mainly ‘broadcast’

5. London 2012 :
What was different?
• Infrastructure
• Social media
• No government controls
• IOC Athlete’s hub
Let’s look at each of these…

6. Infrastructure
• 27m iPhones sold in last 3
months!
• 500m Android smart devices
sold since 2008 with 1.3m new
devices coming online DAILY
• Public are carrying smart
phones, computers with great
cameras… 8 megapixels is
common now on a phone
• And London was ready…
communications companies
expected enormous traffic!

7. Social Media
•Facebook now has over 1bn active users
• Over half of Facebook users mostly use it from
a mobile device
• 500m active Twitter users generating over
340m Tweets every day
•Instagram now has over 100m users, over 1bn
photos uploaded… now about 58 new photos
per second

8. Twitter use during London 2012
Note: indicative based on selected key words – not absolute figures
Source: BBC

9. Government Controls
• Effectively none… no central government
control of social media use – within all normal
laws (threat, abuse, libel etc)
• Some local controls were created during the
Olympic games for security – such as Athlete X is
now at venue Y and travelling to location Z, but
in reality even security was very light touch

10. IOC Athlete’s Hub
hub.olympic.org
Every athlete
Every team
Every sport
Every discipline
Open, free, available to all…

11. IOC Athlete’s Hub
462 Team GB athletes!

12. IOC Athlete’s Hub
162 Team Brazil athletes!

13. Lessons learned
• Content is being consumed differently – people
want two-way communication, feedback
• Broadcast is no longer enough… check the
online backchannel during live TV for proof
• Consumers are also creators – CREATIVES!
• Citizen journalists are often the first at an
event – witness #sandy this week

14. Thoughts for Brazil
• Terra was the only digital
broadcaster at London 2012
• Terra pumped their OBS feed
straight online allowing fans
access to any sport live at any
time – fans filtered on their phone
• This approach combined with
tools like the BBC Olympic App
will define how Rio 2016 is
experienced

15. Next 4 years?
• More smart phones – doubling
year on year in Brazil at
present… smart phone will no
longer be a luxury
• 4G… much faster Internet
from phones
• Focus on phone for
entertainment, TV, contacts, mu
sic, information, advertising
• Greater desire for filtering of
information

16. Observations The way people get
information has changed
The way people find work
and work is changing
People curate and filter –
they are editors
Phone is becoming a central
point of
information, access, payment,
The public is creative… how
does that change the creative
industries?

17. Muito obrigado!
www.markhillary.com
mail@markhillary.com
@markhillary