3:45 AM
Shweta Pandey
The website for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games just got a bit more rowdy. It now features an interactive contest designed to discover which country has the biggest online fan base.
The contest ranks the top 20 countries based on the number of tweets, YouTube videos and Flickr photos submitted. Fans already have submitted more than 20,000 tweets with Great Britain in the lead, followed by Brazil, the U.S., Canada and the Netherlands.
To be considered, tweets need to include the hashtag #1YearToGo, along with the three-letter code for your country. The aim of the contest: to promote the fact that we’re a year away from the opening ceremony of 2012 London Games on July 27, 2012.
As with past sporting events, social media will play a huge role in how fans participate in next summer’s 17-day festivity, whether they’re watching from home or at one of the 32 Olympic venues. We’ll have to wait to see if the level of tweets reaches the magnitude seen during this month’s FIFA Women’s World Cup final game, for example, when Twitter users set a new record of 7,196 tweets per second.
Last month, the Olympic Committee officially encouraged the 10,500 competing athletes from 200 countries to “take part in social media and to post, blog and tweet their experiences,” so long as their efforts are not for commercial purposes.
Tweets aside, the official Olympic website — London2012.com — has cranked up ways for fans to get involved well before the opening ceremony. In March, the website unveiled a feature in which users can create an Olympic mascot and share it on Facebook and Twitter.
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