Just after striking a deal with Facebook to promote Olympic conversations on NBC’s Facebook page, NBC News and NBC O&O TV Stations are joining forces with Storify, the social-media “story creator,” to cover the London Olympic Games in real-time by curating the best social content from across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and more. Storify will put streams of real-time Olympic content, curated from hundreds of NBC journalists and producers on the ground, as well as social media users around the world.
The Storify experience will be embedded on TODAY.com, NBCNewYork.com, NBCLA.com, NBCChicago.com, NBC10.com (Philadelphia), NBCDFW.com, NBCBayArea.com, NBCWashington.com, NBC6.com (Miami/South Florida), NBC7.com (San Diego), and NBCConnecticut.com.
“The 2012 Olympic Games will be more social than ever, and Storify enables us to capture and report on the social stories coming out of the Games in a unique, web-native way,” said Vivian Schiller, Chief Digital Officer of NBC News. “This joint project acts as a journalism endurance test for our teams, as they scour the web for the best content and update the page continuously from now until the end of the Games.”
“The Olympic Games are the perfect event for NBC’s ten owned stations and NBC News to join forces,” said Valari Staab, President of the NBC Owned Television Stations. “We look forward to partnering with the network news team to cover the best and most interesting Olympic stories trending across social media and deliver a high-quality news experience on both a local and national level.”
RBR-TVBR observation: We don’t want to call this overkill, nor do we want to say this will cannibalize regular network ratings of the Olympics. It’s a bit of a gamble, though, in super-serving the audience with all angles Olympic. Will the reporters and producers be able to pull this off professionally? Are there enough social media ad dollars signed to make this worth it? We’ll find out. In any case, many valuable insights will be culled from this grand experiment.
