I’m an Olympics junkie. But, until the olympiad when I can watch the event I want, when I want, wherever I want, my craving will remain unsated.

Athens 2004 gave a glimpse at the potential of the future of Olympics coverage, and as Beijing 2008 approached, it seemed that on-demand, super-immersive web strategy and mobile tactics would be ubiquitous and all-encompassing.

As it turns out, it’s not quite there yet. NBC’s has no regrets however, as their lock down of the coverage has grabbed a 17.6 Nielsen rating and $1 Billion in advertising revenue.

Nevertheless, social media and Web 2.0 has opened new doors for the dissemination and celebration of the games to spread higher, faster and stronger.

Here are some of the strategies and memes that are defining the Olympic Games online and on your mobile device:

Video

Wired’s “How to watch the olympics online”

If you’re hunting for the ultimate on-demand and live coverage online, this is a good place to start.

• howto.wired.com/wiki/Watch_the_Olympics_Online

CCTV Olympics Flash interface

Flash designers are boasting about the scope of the content being delivered on a Flash platform implementation. It’s “pretty,” I suppose, but severely limited as far as organization of the content and usability. It’s possible this answers the question whether Flash can support large projects, but that’s secondary to delivering a good user experience… and Flash just isn’t the right fit for this type of content.

• cctvolympics.com

NBC using Silverlight

… but at least the CCTV site is Flash and not Silverlight. Users, if they’re so fortunate to own a Windows PC, are forced to download the new Microsoft Silverlight plug-in to view NBC’s online video. After that hurdle is cleared, the experience is good for some, terrible for others.

• nbcolympics.com/video

Googolympics

StartupMeme lists the many Google initiatives for the games, including Gadgets, One-box search, Maps visualizations and the (arguably) revolutionary dedicated YouTube channel.

• startupmeme.com/google-geared-up-to-fix-beijing-olympics-2008-2

And here’s Google’s mobile access to stats and updates.

• google.com/m/messageboard?mb=08bj

Widgets

All the major content providers have built desktop widgets.

• www.google.ca/search?q=olympics+widget

Lenovo’s TVTonic Super-Widget

Lenovo’s has sponsored a skinned TVTonic app that allows you to subscribe to full-length events, viewable on- and off-line.

• www.tvtonic.com/olympics/install/

Interactive Strategies

CBC’s Sport Explainer

CBC explains events with simple animations. You can learn water polo by clicking on the link at the bottom right here>

• cbc.ca/olympics/water-polo/

BBC Interactive Olympic Map

The BBC leverages Microsoft Live Search Maps to surface blog and twitter coverage via a geographical visualization.

• news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/olympics/7493757.stm

NYT’s Medal Count Map Visualization

The New York Times shows us the historical (and current) medal counts for all of the modern games.

• nytimes.com/interactive/2008/08/04/sports/olympics/20080804_MEDALCOUNT_MAP.html

BBC’s Olympic Myth: “Monkey”

The Gorillaz’ Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett adapt and animate a classical Chinese novel to promote BBC coverage.

• news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/olympics/monkey/7521287.stm

Mobile

Blackberry Cool’s Olympic Roundup

Follow on your Blackberry with these apps.

• blackberrycool.com/2008/08/get-the-olympics-on-your-blackberry-round-up/

Softpedia’s Blackberry Beijing Travel App

Going to Beijing? Here’s an interesting targeted Travel App.

• handheld.softpedia.com/get/Travel/Travel-Beijing-China-2008-Summer-Olympics-BlackBerry-60532.shtml

Zumobi’s Olympic iPhone App

Zumobi has a simple app – no video, but general coverage, including photos and blogs. If you have an iPhone, let me know what you think of this…

• macworld.com/article/134963/2008/08/olympics_app.html

Social Media

Twitter Hashtags: BG08, Beijing, Olympics

The twitterati can’t make up their mind on a tag, so here’s all three as they are rolling out on Twemes.

• twemes.com/BG08,Beijing,Olympics

Flickr

Wow, Flickr had a great opportunity to capitalize on all the great photos from the event… but finding the good photos is tough. Most searches return almost an equal number of protest and political images as mediocre shots of the games.

• flickr.com/search/?q=beijing+2008+olympics&s=int

Facebook Apps

Pramati has built an interesting Guess-the-Podium app for Sun. It’s a good idea, but tough to guess many events – that is, I could have an educated guess on a World Cup or March Madness app, but I’m not sure who to pick for 60kg Men’s Freestyle Wrestling. Will it be He Qin, Yandro Quintana or Mavlet Batirov who take the gold?

• facereviews.com/2008/08/07/facebook-olympics-app-by-sun/

NBC’s and other also-ran apps are available too.

Wikipedia

• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Summer_Olympics

Blogs

Bloggers Blog Olympics Blogs and Twitterers

A great list of bloggers and twitterers is collected here.

• bloggersblog.com/cgi-bin/bloggersblog.pl?bblog=808081

Athlete Blogs

With so many to follow, I haven’t had a chance to sift through these massive lists. (If you have any highlights of great athlete bloggers or entries, let me know.)

• danwei.org/blogs/athletebloggers_at_beijing_oly.php
• hehe2.net/misc/60-beijing-olympic-athletes-blogs-opml-file-directly-to-your-reader/
• summergames.lenovo.com

Wordpress Tag: Olympics

Of course, there are lots of other bloggers talking about the olympics. Wordpress aggregates the tags from these posts.

• wordpress.com/tag/olympics/

Reuters Olympics Podcasts

• blogs.reuters.com/china/2008/08/08/olympics-podcast-day-one/

User-generated content and Memes

We can’t ignore the waves of UGC and the viral contributions of general public.

FriendFeed Spanish Faux-pas

This story exploded across the web, and gains strength still via social networks.

• friendfeed.com/search?q=spanish+team&public=1

Blue Screen of Death @ Opening Ceremonies

The meme says Windows projected its infamous artwork on during the opening ceremonies. Real or fake? Either way, geeks grabbed on to the story and added another chapter to the Windows Fail mythology.

• gizmodo.com/5035456/blue-screen-of-death-strikes-birds-nest-during-opening-ceremonies-torch-lighting

LOLBush @ Olympics

The Guardian wonders if Bush “can haz” anything else to do, besides watching Misty May dig sand.

• guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2008/aug/12/bushlol?picture=336501045

Sponsor Strategies

Most of the official international sponsors have weak (if any) strategies – Flash timelines and movies that unapologetically cram the brands down the users’ throats. If your computer doesn’t crash, check out Panasonic’s “World Wide Wave.” Yikes.

On the other side of things

McDonalds’ The Lost Ring Cross-channel Immersive Storyline

Wow. I stumbled on to this only recently, and it looks expansive, and impressive. It also looks like it’s nearly over. I’ll be looking deeper into this multilingual social media play.

• thelostring.com

Atos Origin’s On-site Infrastructure

Here’s an overview of Beijing 2008’s IT provider’s offerings, including the “Olympic Family Intranet”

• computing.co.uk/computing/news/2216061/beijing-olympics-primed-break-3988584

Kodak’s Blog?

Meh. Kodak’s final olympiad as an Olympic sponsor passes on a weak note online.

• 1000words.kodak.com

… one interesting post however, is the comprehensive gallery of Kodak’s Olympic Pins.

• tomhoehn.1000words.kodak.com/default.asp?item=2245002

Samsung’s Medal Mania

Medal Mania is a cross-Internet hunt for medals. The clues are kind of lame, but it’s a good attempt at engagement.

• medalmania.com

Official Web Strategy

Beijing 2008’s official site

One wonders at the missed (?) opportunities for the official sites to host and stream on-demand content. And for revenue streams? Sponsorships, subscriptions and fee-driven access. How about a deal with iTunes?

• en.beijing2008.cn

Vancouver 2010

Finally, a shameless proud plug for the home team currently building towards the next winter games. Go Canada Go! (See you there.)

• vancouver2010.com

This list is a work-in-progress. Send me your links and thoughts on the games…

It looks like Twitter’s ready for your brand. Is your airline, coffee franchise, financial services organization, non-profit, car dealership, landscaping company, ad agency, funeral home or laundromat ready to Twitter?

From a social media marketing analysis standpoint, the conversation has changed from questioning Twitter’s viability as a channel to acceptance of the tool, its audience stability and growth. The question now is, how does a brand use it without (as the internet-savvy say) EPIC FAIL?

Here are some of the recent thoughts, proofs and discussions:

1. Dell expands Twitter strategy
2. Dell explains their strategy on YouTube
3. Zappos (@zappos) has 400+ employees on Twitter (and amazing online reputation/WOM momentum), and here are the employees: twitter.zappos.com/employees
4. Bryan Person (@BryanPerson) is collecting “BrandsOnTwitter” Delicious Links
5. Jeremiah Owyang (@jowyang) analyzes at the Brands that have been unsuccessful on Twitter
6. Fortune Magazine highlights Twitter’s potential

Let me know if you find more analysis to help brand planners and marketers understand Twitter.

Follow me here: @craigritchie

Update: Jeremiah Owyang has posted his recommendations for Brands on Twitter.

Specifically I like the flash-and-fade error and confirmation message after an action is taken.

Big, bold, and then it becomes unintrusive all by itself. (Did you miss it? Refresh this blog to see it again.) Note that I’ve changed the colors to match my blog to demonstrate the change from sparkling to faded. I’ll be recommending this type of message styling for many web sites in the future.

Twead carefully during your keynote

Recently, at the Toronto Mesh web conference, a lot was revealed about the future of conferences. Specifically, the massive impact of mobile devices and social media tools on these types of get-togethers. The communication vehicle of choice? Twitter, of course. During the two-day event, power-tweeters (frequent users of Twitter) introduced the power and benefits of micro-blogging to dozens of twuddites. (Twitter luddites)

What was the call to action for these new adopters? Easily a quarter of the audience members in any given session had laptops open, and half of them were twittering amongst themselves, expanding the presentations and panels to deep discussions in the seats.

Twemes, a Twitter API implemetation, further enabled the conversation between tweeters, as Mesh attendees or ‘Meshies’ tagged their 140-character-or-less comments with ‘#mesh08,’ allowing the community to follow the discussion in real time as the comments rolled by. You can see all of these comments aggregated here.

I recommend trying out Twemes.com: ideally, follow a “hot pick” in the top right corner (these are usually conferences) and click “start live update” to see the topic-tagged twitters roll by. You can imagine the additional engagement this provides for events and conferences.

The added value of the Twitter conversation backchannel was obvious. During the conference, Meshies were using Twitter to discuss the future of music as a business model, and taking the liberty of re-branding Saturn’s awkwardly named social network ImSaturn (the marketer from Saturn tried desperately to point us to the correct URL, but stumbled through the difficult address).

Do we even have to attend anymore?

ScribbleLive was unveiled at Mesh ‘08, a live blogging platform with real-time updates. In this forum, ScribbleLive users live-blogged forums and presentations, allowing multi-taskers and attendees in other sessions follow multiple discussions. For a great example of the group blogging output, check out the live blog of Steve Jobs’ Keynote at the WWDC, including his announcement of the new iPhone 3G.

My mobile meeting manager

Mesh ‘08 also boasted an impressive, although slightly off-the-mark blackberry app. The technically-oriented (crackberry-addicted) audience presented an optimal opportunity for Sweet Caesar to offer a free downloadable guide to the event. The features and user experience of the app were quite valuable, even though it just left me wanting more.

Among the features were a venue map, schedule and presenter bios. Unfortunately, this information didn’t update over the two days and was incorrect (as conference schedules go) as soon as the first keynote began. Overall however, the implementation demonstrated the potential for great value in the future. Now event planners must consider “What is my mobile strategy?” “What is my web strategy?” Maybe next time we’ll see the integration of Twitter, ScribbleLive and social networking tools to enhance our next Mesh (or your next conference’s) experience.

Look for Part 2 of my post on the evolution of Meetings and Conferences: Meeting virtually in real life (Part 2): Entertain us, we’re bored and twittering.

Social Media in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo.

Now I just need a tool to keep all of these great new tools organized in my brain so that I can remember them nanoseconds after the need arises…

More than 7,000 entries have been submitted.

The top 150 (yes, One Hundred and Fifty, not top 10 or 20…) are now available for voting, and the quality of art is astonishing. Spend some time in the virtual art show here.

Also notable is the quality of the conversation and virulence of the campaign. The discussion board boasts more than 100 topics, with conversation ranging from Global Warming - Real, or Hoax?” to sub-campaigns started by the participants suggesting that competitors “Rate the Person Above You’s Grafitti!!”

The engagement reaches beyond the page as 1,471 Facebook fans are spreading word of the campaign.

Quite simply put, there is a monumental difference between social media strategies that sputter and die because of lack of knowledge and direction, and successful campaigns like this one that is lead by expertise and focus.

Hat tip to Jeremiah Owyang (twitter @jowyang) once again for the link.

“Yes, print is a burden. It’s expensive to produce for it. It’s expensive to manufacture. It’s expensive to deliver. It limits your space. It limits your timing. It’s stale when it’s fresh. It is one-size-fits-all and can’t be adapted to the needs of each user. It comes with no ability to click for more. It has no search. It can’t be forwarded. It has no archive. It kills trees. It uses energy. It usually brings unions. And you really should recycle it. Wow, when you think about it, print sucks.”

And at this point, there really are very few markets and demographics that can’t be best targetted online.

For the rest of Jeff Jarvis’ insight, check out the Buzz Machine blog.

What sites should run Drupal?

Yours.

What is Drupal? A content and community management system. In a nutshell, everything your CMS does, Drupal does it better.

The key point for the hundreds of Drupal developers in Boston? From the creator of Drupal himself, Dries Buytaert, “Release the Killer App.”

Buytaert outlined a few key improvements to meet this ambitious goal that are in the works for Drupal version 7, due in a few months. Future killer app release aside, the features and benefits of Drupal are already very apparent in the latest implementations.

Drupal shops demonstrated several impressive case studies in Boston, with a wide range of product goals and technological implementations. The key point? It’s not just “Freaks and geeks” that are using Drupal for their World of Warcraft blogs.*

So what can one create with Drupal?

Drupal boasts over 3,400 “modules.” These code sets bolt on to one’s Core Drupal site in minutes — or as fast as your server can accept file transfers… With these modules, some Drupal rockstar developers and themers and some great team leaders, these are six examples of the amazing creations that are possible.

Popular Science (www.popsci.com)

“We wanted to practice what we preach.” - The PopSci Team.

Pingvision, one of the newish self-described ‘Drupal shops’ worked with the PopSci Interactive team to produce the online presence of the famous print magazine devoted to innovation. You can read the full case study here.

Pingvision developed a blog-style interface with publishing and workflow managment for the content creators. To meet some of the specifications, Pingvision’s developers created new modules, and is currently making them available for all Drupal users.

Zuda Comics (www.zudacomics.com)

“IBM endorses and implements Drupal.” — Oliver Siodmak, Associate Partner, IBM Global Business Services

Zuda is DC Comics’ foray into online community for comic readers — a market that is nowhere near the size of the 90s equivalent, but one that is even more passionate than ever. Zuda attempts to find the next Superman, 300 or 30 days of night, comic books-turned movies that have built cash-raking brands for DC.

Comic creators can submit their work to the community for rating. Popular work can earn these artists and writers huge opportunity in the form of a contract with DC.

IBM produced the site, executing a brilliant theme and interface for reading and rating comics on screen. The full case study is here.

Fast Company (www.fastcompany.com)

“We spent a lot of money on that, and now it’s yours.” — Ed Sussman, Fast Company Team Lead on sharing a customized module with the Drupal community.

At the Boston Drupalcon, the hybrid team of multiple companies presenting new Fast Company online community seemed to be breathing a sigh of relief. The 120-pages of information architecture proved to be a challenge to Drupalize; the 500K strong existing community from Fast Company’s legacy site was obviously a task to integrate; and the hard launch date required to unveil at the Inc500 conference was unforgiving, but the outcome is impressive.

See the case study here.

Fast Company 2.0-ifyed it’s community with new tools, a new interface and a new spike in engagement. The team reports acceleration in traffic and time-on-site. If you join one site on this list, make it this one.

Warner Bros. Records Artists’ Communities

“The web site is the centre of the company.” — Ethan Kaplan, Warner Bros. Head of Technology

Warner Bros. has fully embraced Drupal as their solution-of-choice for all of their artists’ web sites. Fans of Britney (whoops, Britney.com’s been Drupalized, but she ain’t on Warner Bros., she’s on Sony BMG, so I dunno, let’s go with) Ashley Tisdale, Josh Groban, Avenged Sevenfold, Michael Buble and My Chemical Romance are enjoying new communities built around their respective and unique needs and wants.

The Warner Bros. web team boasted speed to market as one Drupal’s main benefits — they have launched more than 50 web communities in the past year, with unique databases, modules and themes (wild and crazy pink for Britney’s young fans; sparkling head shots and big type for Josh Groban’s more mature audience). The sites’ retention, according to the technical lead, easily quadruples when they switch from the one-way flash sites to Drupal’s user-empowering engine.

Amnesty International (www.amnesty.org)

Developer and business teams around the world worked together to produce the new Amnesty International web site. This implementation features Drupal’s highly-scalable localization (translation) module, including RTL (right-to-left for Arabic). CivicActions developed the site to add future languages with ease. Read the full case study here.

Rockband (www.rockband.com)

… And Drupal’s okay with Flash too. Check out Rockband’s appropriately loud and abrasive experience for a great example.

You can download Drupal at www.Drupal.org and start building your community.

The fallout is everywhere, and new, real growth from that fallout is happening thanks to users spanning beyond the early adopters and tech-savvy teens. So, ‘Hi’ to the grandmothers and other “late adopters” (CEOs?) out there joining the conversation. It’s richer now, and we’re all benefiting.

(Consequently, marketers are very worried about what this foreshadows for their brands. That’s another blog post, however, and more suited to my new (shameless plug alert) blog, Badvocates.com.)

To build a strategy that prepares for this, each community should consider focusing on the five ‘I’s of online community. They aren’t rocket science, but they address the common mistake that site and tool builders are making: focusing on the hip and nifty 2.0 technology at the expense of defining the true value of that tech and the community one hopes it will foster.

Take twitter for example — launched in June of 2006, and the favourite of the elite when trying to sound in the know. Half a million users and a thousand copy cats. But most non-twitterers, and even many twitterers themselves, still question the value of the tool.

Twitter, and the designers of your online community (social network, blog, fan page, online brand presence, or twitter rip-off) must consider the five ‘I’s of online communities:

1. Investment

I’m not referring to your VC. But rather your users’ investment, and how you design your community to allow them to invest their time, energy and effort in to your community. The more a user feels they have invested in a community, and the more that community is able to interact with them, the less likely they are to move on to the competition.

2. Incentives

What incentive is there to join? To tell a friend? To stop lurking and really start contibuting to the community?
… And how difficult is it? It’s certainly not enough to say “everyone else is using it” — The public may come, but this fact won’t make them stay… It’s a self-defeating strategy.

3. Information

Arm your users with the info to understand the ever-increasing value of your product. Netvibes does this well — inserting a bright banner on my personal homepage whenever they improve their toolset. (Which I accept and close at my leisure.) Furthermore, arm your users with the ability to advocate your service. Twitter could benefit greatly from this. People are constantly questioning the value of the service, and it’s a difficult concept to sell, unless you’ve tried it.

4. Interaction

Ah yes, the most difficult element to conceive, capture and champion. How do your users interact with each other? How do they even find each other? How do they interact with you? How do you braodcast new improvements? This is the core of Facebook’s value . Members most find out about new applications when friends choose to use them, creating easy access and viral adoption.

5. Innovation

What are you doing better than before? Better than the competition? What’s the next improvement you’re launching? Can your users evangelize it in- and outside of the community?

Ultimately, a successful online community doesn’t come from the tool, it comes from the adoption of that tool and its continued use.

How do you foster online community?

Take these five ‘I’s and turn them into a ‘We.’

And here’s Commoncraft’s explanation of RSS.

See? Great right? I even thought I’d send it over to some bloggers I follow. But I’m four months too late.

Ah well. For more on the Interweb Superhighway, watch this oldie-but-goodie:

Let’s do some things that generate buzz; that catch some users’ and customers’ attention. I’m not talking about setting fire to the brand and chopping down the business, just grabbing some momentum and market share and allowing room for some failures. Let’s set some benchmarks.

1. The mis- and overuse of flash for no real value; and,
2. A watered-down attempt at UGC (user-generated content) by a corporation

Update: A Sears marketer has posted that this was not an attempt at UGC… good positive follow up on the blog, but really, what was the point of this site anyway?

Update 2: Man, that security guard is creepy.

One other question I’ve been asking a lot lately is “Why would anyone want to use this?”

Somewhat surprisingly, many people on many projects don’t have a quick answer.

Usability Checklist

Concepts & Terminology

• Do users understand the terms used in the interface?
• Are there concepts they gloss over or misconstrue?
• For new concepts, is the user able to figure them out?

Navigation, Work Flow & Task Flow

• Are users able to find their way around?
• Will they search, use links, or both?
• If there’s a work flow or sequence of steps, does it match what users expect?
• Do they have to keep flipping back and forth between screens?
• Does the interface ask for inputs that the users don’t have, or don’t want to enter?

Content

• Does the site/interface provide the right information for users to make decisions? What things do they look for?
• Is it useful and/or interesting to them?
• Is ther extra content that they don’t need or that annoys them?

Documentation, Help

• What assistance does the user need to successfully complete tasks?
• What’s the best way to provide that information?
• Can users quickly find the information they need, and make sense of it?

Requirements & Functionality

• Does the interface do the right set of things for its target audience?
• Do users have additional needs that aren’t being satisfied?
• Is there anything you could do to make the user’s life easier?
• Are you planning to implement something that users don’t really need?

Screen Layout

• Is the amount of information per screen overwhelming, not enough, or about right?
• Do users miss seeing something that’s important?
• Are there elements that need to be brought out more in the visual design? Any that distract the user?
• Has white space been used effectively? Images?
• Do we have the right stuff “above the fold?”

Brand

• Does the interface reflect the qualities that the company wants to convey?
• Does the user experience match what the designer intended?
• Are there frustrations or obstacles that can be removed?
• Do users like it?

Colors, Fonts and Other Graphic Elements

• Can users see/read everything well enough?
• Do the most important elements stand out?
• Are there any considerations pertaining to lighting vision difficulties, or color blindness?
• Is the interface aesthetically pleasing?
• Do users understand what the icons mean?

Widgets & Controls

• Do the rollover menus work for users or do they have trouble?
• Do users notice the status line message?
• Can they figure out what the cursor changes mean?
• Will multiple windows be a problem?
• Do the slider controls have the right granularity?
• Did we pick the best keyboard shortcuts?

Response Time & Performance Metrics

• Does the system respond quickly enough to satisfy users?
• Do the pages load fast enough?
• Does the display change quickly enough when the user manipulates a control?
• Are there any download or processing delays that users might find annoying or unacceptable?
• How quickly can users complete this task?

Real-world Use

• How does this tool fit with others that users have?
• What things will annoy power users after 6 months?
• Which of these function are people really going to use?
• What happens when the user is interrupted mid task?

Paper Prototyping also has good techniques to shorten development times and sell ideas to Internet non-experts. Buy it here at Amazon.

Seth does it much better — referring to it as “The Within Reason” clause.

It’s time to be unreasonable.