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NBC Taps SocNets to Generate Olympic Buzz


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With 100 days left until the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, NBC Universal is adding a variety of new high-tech and social media features to its main Olympics website, NBCOlympics.com, to generate interest in the games and boost video views of the events.

NBC is aiming to build on the success of its live and taped online video offerings during the 2008 Beijing Olympics, which attracted tens of millions of users.

As an added feature to its existing high-definition video player, NBC is debuting a DVR-like functionality that will enable users to rewind video, highlight clips, and save them, Seeking Alpha reports.

NBC hopes to encourage fans to spend more time viewing event videos by incorporating Facebook Connect, which will let users to chat with their Facebook friends as they watch events.

The updated Olympics website also will include a "Tweets and Blogs" section, which will feature a real-time compilation of Twitter updates from select Olympic athletes and NBC analysts, up-to-the-minute tracking of the most popular content being shared on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks, and a number of blogs.

Past History of Success

During the 2008 Beijing Olympics, NBCOlympics.com attracted more than 50 million fans from around the world, who initiated 70 million video streams and watched 10 million hours of video over the course of the Games.

The website provided 2,200 hours of live content and 3,000 hours of on-demand video. The average user watched 27 minutes of video, according to NBC.

Additionally, NBC expanded its mobile content offering with a mobile site, text and e-mail alerts and mobile video available from NBCOlympics2Go, a mobile channel with event coverage that streamed Olympic coverage from NBC, USA, MSNBC and CNBC.

Live Events with Facebook Connect

NBC’s integration of Facebook Connect with its Olympics online video platform comes after CNN.com made news for its use of the social networking tool during President Obama’s inauguration in January.

Facebook reported that more than two million status updates were posted through the CNN.com Live Facebook feed during Inauguration Day, with 4,000 status updates per minute on average, and a large spike of 8,500 updates when President Obama began his speech.

Related Topics

biz buzz
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