The Olympics are one of those sporting events that are watched all over the world and solely by the size of the audience, social networks cannot afford to ignore it since people will be talking about the events they see on the various games.
Facebook does not want to be left out in the action and that is why they have rolled out a way for you to follow the events surrounding the Olympics right from your News Feed.
You will see a notification with an Olympic torch as a banner on your News Feed with the caption “Excited for the Games? Explore a few ways to be a part of Rio 2016.” When you tap on the “tap for more” button, you will be ushered into a new timeline that bears your profile picture and several venues Facebook wants you to follow the Rio Olympics from. These resources include Facebook Live to keep up with the in-the-moment events, using Facebook Search to see what people are sharing and using Events to inform you of places to go watch the Games. It is rather weird that they didn’t mention Sports Stadium, which is a hub Facebook announced a while back where you get information about various sporting events that are happening.
This will be the first Olympics (I bet) where social media will move from being the second screen to compete for the first screen eyeballs. Although people will definitely watch the games on the big screen, they will definitely go to Facebook and the likes for back stage passes, direct interviews with the athletes and weird stuff that wouldn’t be shown on TV.
