2012 Olympic Logo courtesy of DesignYouTrust.com

According to a Mashable article on Monday, athletes competing in the 2012 Olympic Games are free (even encouraged), to tweet, post and blog during competition. However, the athletes’ social media privileges are accompanied by plenty of rules and regulations. Social media-savvy athletes must use appropriate language, “first-person, diary-type format” and shouldn’t be reporting on events in a journalistic manner. Violation of any of these rules could mean getting banned from the competition. Additionally, uploading photos to social media sites is permitted (as long as they are not sold or distributed), but uploading videos is not.

My last semester at Marist, I took ‘Olympics & Media’ as an elective course and our class often discussed the strict rules and regulations that were cast upon athletes, media and sponsors in all aspects of the games. Therefore, I was surprised when I read this Mashable article, especially when I learned that during the 2008 Olympics athletes were told not to upload photos during competition.

In the past four years the social media revolution has taken the world by storm so it seems natural that the Olympics is jumping on the bandwagon. Allowing athletes to use social media during competition is plenty of free publicity for the Olympics, so why not let Michael Phelps tweet what he had for breakfast minutes before he breaks another world record?

What do you think? Will you follow your favorite athletes during the competition? Will it add excitement to the Olympic games?