Our blogs are the platforms from which we share our experiences, opinions, and views with the online world. As part…
By Our blogs are the platforms from which we share our experiences, opinions, and views with the online world. As part of our Weekly Writing Challenges, we want to help you find what you’re opinionated about.
With our Mind the Gap posts, we’ll pick a trending topic in the media and ask you what you think. Each Mind the Gap challenge will include a poll where you can cast your vote along with your fellow Daily Post participants. After you vote, tell us more about how you feel by expanding on the topic in a blog post.
To participate in the challenge, tag your posts with “DPchallenge” or leave a link to your post in the comments. We will keep an eye on the tag and highlight the week’s best posts on Freshly Pressed each Friday.
Rare is the person who wasn’t following this summer’s Olympic games. Whether you watched each competition on the edge of your seat, cheering on your country’s team, or were completely baffled by all of the hype, one thing is certain: this year, the Olympics went social.
Last week, there were more Tweets in a single day than during the entire Beijing Olympics and even the athletes themselves were sharing their experiences on Twitter. VentureBeat and TechCrunch called it the first social Olympic games—or “Socialympics”—, though skeptics remained unconvinced that the increase social network activity and the Olympic games were related.
This week’s Mind the Gap: Has social media changed how you view the Olympics? Take the poll (below) and then explain your opinion by blogging about it on your site, tagging it ‘DPchallenge’.
Want to know what other WordPress.com bloggers are saying? Check out these posts for inspiration:
- Has #NBCFailed Us?
- No Such Thing as a Bad Hashtag
- Reality or “Reality”? (Time Entertainment)
- Don’t Spoil My Winner
Don’t forget to take the Daily Post survey, so we can learn more about your blogging habits and goals and how we can support them!
The Daily Post 
I was considering writing about the Olympics today. This gives me a starting point for that post. Will be interesting to see the poll results and to read others’ entries.
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“Rare is the person who wasn’t following this summers Olympic games.”
I smile and confess that I did not follow, as I have not had a television in over a dozen years. On Saturday I had my first glimpse on a small television in a little store in a quiet town in Ecuador.
There are times when a television would enhance my life, and this is one of those times.
I look forward to reading some of the posts for this category!
From my quiet oasis in Ecuador,
Lisa/Z
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Good for you! Coming from someone with a TV, it was pretty hard not to follow – I somehow always ended up watching the competitions 🙂
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To see the best of the best — wow, who wouldn’t want to watch as much as possible?!!! I would have been watching with you! 🙂 Lisa/Z
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I don’t have a tv either, so I wasn’t following it much. But then I remembered I have a computer, of course! I was able to watch a little of it at that point 🙂
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How great! The connection speed is usuallly too slow for features like skype, and youtubes take about fifteen minutes to load, so watching live usually doesn’t work well unless i’m in a city. and wow, when in the city, i play catch up! 😀
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I tweeted, blogged and cheered like mad and before I even say this weeks theme here i blogged one last time today on them :http://freepennypress.wordpress.com/2012/08/13/even-an-old-dog-can-learn-new-tricks/
London Olympics 2012 rocked !!
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The big difference for me was this was the first Games were social media made interaction with the athletes a possibility. At times a surreal experience.
For my own part, I wrote a piece on how language struggles to deal with Olympic achievement (also contains a betting summary of the Games): http://worthaspin.wordpress.com/2012/08/10/going-for-gold/
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I don’t have TV so I didn’t get to watch hardly any. I couldn’t even get coverage online. Not even taped reruns. I had to rely on photos and bad news stories which had very little to do with the events. So sad. On the good side, I got work done that surely wouldn’t have had I been watching.
As for social media, I followed an athlete on FB and that was fun. But I didn’t blog about it. So, social media certainly had an impact on how I related to the Olympics, but I can’t answer the poll. I don’t really fit any of the choices.
Where are the good old days where you can just watch the action live regardless what country the athlete was from and have some good commentary about the race sans commercialism?
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My experience mimicked Kelly’s. We have a TV, but we don’t have it connected to any type of TV signal… so it’s only used for movies or TV on DVD. And like Kelly, I couldn’t find streaming video online either. I gave up on finding actual news stories, as the only things I could locate were ridiculous stories about how the photographs of the US team were bad, or how the outfits enhanced performance. It was the first time I was completely disengaged.
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Social media provided the tools and medium for more insider’s look at the Olympics from the athletes themselves and behind-the-scenes information. I learned that the athletes had to pay taxes on the medals and how much an athletes is paid for winning the medal for a country depends on the country and the medal i.e. gold, silver and bronze.
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Ha. That was easy! Here’s mine:
http://katharinetrauger.wordpress.com/2012/08/13/i-have-a-confession-to-make/
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As a non-cable subscriber, I was pretty much forced to view the Olympics via social media. Though interesting, I don’t think it was as good as seeing it “live.” (and I’m totally not touching the whole tape delay thing!) http://rochellekarina.com/2012/08/13/shhh-the-bogosphere-is-recovering-from-the-olympic-virus/
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Cool challenge! We don’t watch TV (and I was honestly too lazy to watch it through social media), so I only got a few glimpses of the Olympics. Still, it’s a great topic to write about; I’m looking forward to this. 🙂
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I like watching to Olympics but we did not have the cable TV or internet access to do so this year.
http://kansamuse.wordpress.com/2012/08/13/high-speed-just-a-dream-for-many-americans/
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Honestly, none of the three options applied to me. I didn’t want to like the olympics but I ended watching it and enjoying it anyway. I used twitter to comment on it – so I wouldn’t say they were completely unrelated – but I didn’t read much about it on social media or blog about it (until today, when I thought I’d question why London was only ‘friendly’ for two weeks). 😀 http://mystudentstruggles.wordpress.com/2012/08/13/olympic_fever/
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I wrote about the Olympics, as soon as the closing ceremony ended. i was taking notes the whole time because i couldn’t believe how bad it was. It was so bad it inspired me to write about it. Very dissapointing. They could have done so much more and that was what they chose to show. if anyone’s interested in seeing why we voted thumbs down for the olympics, you can click on my username to read the post. or here: http://paperportraiture.wordpress.com/2012/08/13/london-2012-closing-ceremony-the-endless-commercial/ As for this poll, TV in spain showed mostly only their athletes and left out various sports – I might just blog about that too and tag it here! I like the initiatives on this page, thanks for all you guys do
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TV coverage was mixed to so-so because if I watched BBC (as a Non-Brit on holiday in the UK) all I got to see was coverage of British athletes. Even if athletes from different counties got Gold and Silver, the BBC only went and congratulated the third place Bronze winner if they were a GB athlete!
Worse still, they went and commiserated with several 4th place Brits and totally ignored the podium winners in several events. (Rude!)
Yes, they were the host nation, but there were MORE athletes competing than just theirs and I would have liked to have seen more coverage of them ALL, especially the smaller nations.
I enjoyed my holiday doing other things instead and ended up just watching a few snippets of the Olympics.
Pity the UK couldn’t have provided a more International viewing experience.
Subsequently I didn’t feel there was much to bother blogging about re the Olympics.
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So where’s home KiwiDutch person? Was the coverage any less country biased there?
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Dual nationality… Born in New Zealand (Kiwi) with Dutch Father (Dutch) and now living in The Netherlands.
Yes, granted The Dutch coverage was probably biased towards Dutch athletes but at least the have translation into the Dutch language an a “reason” for that to some extent.
I had hoped that the BBC’s supposed impartiality and more international experience as well as being Hosts would have meant that they would have least have tried to be less biased with their coverage.
They did at least KNOW they would have thousands of non-Brit visitors visiting expressly for the Games who also wanted to follow and support their own counties teams and get updates on their progress.
Therein lies the biggest difference between Dutch coverage and that of the British, as Host nation the games should not have “just” been about them 🙂
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Here’s my offering: http://missiome.wordpress.com/2012/08/13/day-219/
kiwidutch – I think that’s probably the reality of every national broadcaster. Also, having watched a lot of the games, there were lots of interviews with other nationals – particularly in track and field. Sorry that you think we might have been a bit biased!
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missiome,
I checked your blog… cool! I was looking forward to seeing interviews with some of the participants of the smaller nations, but sadly that didn’t seem to happen and in cycling a Dutch lady got Gold but they only interviewed the British lady who got silver… yes I have to admit that I was disappointed.
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Sorry about that…they can go a bit over the top sometimes!
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missiome,
they can go a bit over the top sometimes””….
(sigh) we are ALL guilty of that sometimes aren’t we? 🙂
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Please read my blog
http://zewpress.wordpress.com/2012/08/11/thumb-usaina-bolta-and-i/
Sorry for my english
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I didn’t get into the Olympics as much as I would have in prior years, but I do think social media played an important role and unfortunately some of the athletes learned that the hard way.
http://blasdetejas.wordpress.com/2012/08/13/social-media-saved-the-olympics/
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With the exception of the uniform uproar and the judo champion abused by her coach, there was very little about the 2012 Olympics that fit my blog topic. I didn’t cover the games until today because I didn’t watch them. http://wp.me/p2gCvA-lY
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The Olympics performed a miracle for one British cynic :
http://wp.me/p2CjcG-76
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An offering from my two year old! http://wp.me/s2AtOu-185
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Starting young – I like it! 🙂
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I know! I blog from his perspective, he has more fun than a grown up 🙂
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There was so much info on the Olympics that i decided to skip it… but will consider this new idea for sure. TY! 😉
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Here’s my entry for this week’s Writing Challenge: http://eof737.wordpress.com/2012/08/16/olympics-inspiration-flying-higher/
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http://bluerosegirl08.wordpress.com/2012/08/13/day-153-why-i-didnt-watch-the-olympics-at-all/
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We do a lot of things wrong, but at least we did the Olympics right.
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Social media didn’t make much of a difference to me. I like watching the events on TV, but I wish the coverage was better. http://fourdeeroak.wordpress.com/2012/08/13/mind-the-gap-socialympics/ Having read some of the responses (after I wrote mine), I’m wondering if maybe I did miss out — but I think it is a different kind of experience. Tweeting, for me, would not replace viewing Olympic coverage on TV.
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http://wp.me/p2zaCH-6T
It seems i don’t know how to link. It’s in my blog titled, WordPress question of the week, and I did tag it dpchallenge. I think i need a personal tech tutor.
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My writing is on the Olympics, but from a time when social media was unheard and unthought of: http://sumit519.wordpress.com/2012/08/08/ancient-olympics-why-a-lady-named-kallipateira-might-be-the-most-courageous-personality-associated-with-the-games/
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So much fun, I did this one twice:
http://katharinetrauger.wordpress.com/2012/08/14/mind-the-other-gap/
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does watching it the conventional way make me a dork? i really didn’t follow the olympics through social medias.. just plain TV. what an old school 🙂
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You know, I mostly watched the Olympics the “conventional” way as well 🙂
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I blogged about the Olympics alright but more about the lack of creativity in the opening and closing ceremony – it was upsetting. I like Britain but goodness me ….. anyway this is it!
http://aphrojunkee.wordpress.com/2012/08/13/britain-has-no-talent/
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As a former figure skater and Olympic hopeful, I have possibly a bit of a slanted view and having a BA CMNS with masters in Magazine Publishing, Social Media and events go hand in hand for me. It’s not possible for me to answer your poll because the option isn’t available for me. I suppose the box I would tick would have say: Not at all, the two go completely hand in hand. 🙂
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I voted but am not going to devote an entire blog post to the Olympics. The best part of social media being a part of the Olympics is that the athletes themselves participate. Seeing a million tweets from people I follow saying “Go USA” isn’t very eventful. In fact, the repetitiveness of it is quite annoying. It would be more “newsworthy” if you were an American posting support for someone OTHER than Team USA. So, for me, the ability to see reactions from athletes via Twitter was the most exciting aspect of social media’s involvement in the Olympics. Micro-blogging is still blogging. An opinion is an opinion. Ones that come from the source hold my interest more.
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