It’s Day 4 of the 2010 Winter Olympics and, thanks to Presidents Day weekend, we’ve actually had plenty of time to watch the sports and enjoy some of the extras. Just a few days in, here are some thoughts on Olympic hits and misses:
Let’s start with TV. As we all know, we still can’t control what we get to watch on TV. NBC decides that for us at this year’s Olympics, and it can be very frustrating knowing that we’re stuck watching one particular sport while others are also going on. We’ve all known the frustration of watching figure skating recaps when we know hockey is being played somewhere. And don’t forget those tear-jerker videos about the difficulties each athlete has faced on the road to Olympic glory. Yawn. So let’s take control and move on to the …
Web!
NBC should be given some credit here. They’ve done a decent job of making their site as social and on-demand as possible. Some highlights:
Social: Users are given the ability to follow NBC Olympics on various social media platforms: Twitter, Facebook RSS, widgets, and mobile.
The website itself is a flurry of activity, from videos to Twitter feeds, to medal counts and player profiles.
Twitter: Aggregation of athlete tweets allows users to catch up on latest news and follow in real time. This is a cool feature, but would be made even simpler if a “follow” button were included on the main page. Instead, users must click on the athlete’s name, wait for a summary drop-down, and then click “follow.” The extra step slightly complicates things.
Video: Fans can watch complete events online, but must first jump through the hoops of proving they are cable subscribers. Full clips are raw, meaning no voiceover from commentators – which can be a positive or a negative, depending on how you feel about sportscasters. I watched the men’s 7.5K sprint biathlon in its entirety (yes I do have a life – Biathlon is surprisingly addictive!) and was at first slightly confused by the lack of commentary, but later decided I liked not having to listen to what can become rather annoying babble. I did have to read up on some of the rules without the help of commentators, but I didn’t mind that so much. On the negative side, none of the videos are embeddable. So I can tell you all about how the Korean speed skaters got greedy and edged themselves out of a medal sweep on Saturday night, but telling you about it is the best I can do since I can’t embed the video in this post.
So what happens when we’re no longer enjoying a long weekend and have to get away from the TV? Well fortunately for all of us, there’s…
Mobile!
NBC has created a pretty nifty little NBC Olympics app, which allows users to stay more or less up-to-date with what’s happening in each sport. I say more-or-less because I just checked the incorporated athlete Twitter feed, and the most recent tweets on the app were from Apolo Ohno several hours ago, though I know from the website that several other athletes have tweeted since then. There doesn’t seem to be a “reload” function on the app to address this. On the other hand, when you’re on the go and you need a quick medal fix, the Olympics app does the trick.
In other mobile news, Foursquare and the New York Times have teamed up to create a new badge for the 2010 Vancouver Games, the NY Times Olympian, which users can unlock by checking in at a Times-recommended venue.
Despite the fact that brands seem to be jumping on the Foursquare bandwagon every minute, this is still a pretty cool idea, but only if you’re lucky enough to get to go to the Olympics. For me, it’s just a grey badge on my screen I know I’ll never get to attain. Along with that Olympic gold medal. So sad.