The Twitter Olympics

With the Olympics just a week away we first take a look at how the athletes who are already arriving at the Olympic Village are using Twitter.

Back in March, some of the Acknowledgement team were fortunate enough to take part in a live debate with British Olympians on how they will be using social media at the 2012 Games - you can read our thoughts on it here.

Even since the 2008 Beijing games, four years ago, social media platforms and how we communicate through them has evolved.  London 2012 will be the first truly social Olympic Games and fans now will have an even closer relationship with the athletes as they journal their experiences of the London Games.

The athletes began to arrive on Monday and immediately started to tweet their experiences of the London Games. US 400m Hurdler, Kerron Clement expressed his frustration with the his travel arrangements in London.

I suspect a 4 hour journey may be a slight exaggeration, especially as he will have been using the controversial 'Games Lanes'!

This kind of Athlete frustration would have previously been brushed under the rug by Olympic PR teams and not so readily known to the wider public, but London 2012 organisers face potential embarrassment from warts-and-all tweets that they will be keen to hide.

British Freestyle Swimmer, Rebecca Adlington was keen to show off her accommodation in the Olympic Village, which saw a negative response from Twitter users about the length of the bed.

Don't expect to hear much from Adlington, during the event though as she will be avoiding Twitter to stop hurtful comments from effecting her performance.

But athletes be warned! The IOC will be keeping close tabs, ensuring that no video from within the Olympic village is shared via social media.  Take a look at their strict social media rules for participants of the games here.

Brands will also be looking to take advantage of the biggest Olympic audience ever.

Innocent drinks ran a 'Tweet for a Seat' campaign at the beginning of the month, rewarding fans of the brand who engaged with the campaign with free tickets to the games.

Nike, a non-official sponsor of the games, will be running realtime sponsored ads that will comment on Nike endorsed athletes. When the USA men's basketball team are playing, the Jordan brand will serve up Tweets commenting on the game that will tie in with the #riseabove campaign. It's hoped that Twitter users caught in the Olympics buzz will comment and retweet these posts.

Acknowledgement have created (in collaboration with Sociagility) a social tool that tracks the social media performance of Olympics sponsors - check it our here Social Media Leaderboard.

What brands do you think have been maximising their Twitter presence for the Olympic Games?