2016 Rio Olympics push the envelope with social media

With the 2016 Rio Olympics now over, social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook are looking back at the games and are analyzing the data they’ve captured over the past few weeks.

“Rio 2016 was one of the most social and interactive sporting events in the world,” said Meg Sinclair, the head of communications for Facebook Canada, in a recent statement sent to MobileSyrup.

Now, a little background on myself and why I feel that this is news worthy content. If you don’t know me yet, I’m behind all things social at MobileSyrup. Meaning, I’m the guy monitoring our social media channels, reading every comment on the site, and developing plans to engage with you, our readers, on a more frequent basis via social media.

So when I heard that this year’s summer Olympics amounted to the most social sporting event in the history of the world, my attention was immediately grabbed. Not only is the amount social media interaction interesting, the technology athletes used to interact on social media is fascinating as well.

For example, Facebook set up a live broadcasting facility inside the Canada Olympic house that allowed our athletes to broadcast on Facebook Live, streaming the content live into the homes of fellow Canadians. On Instagram and Twitter, Canadian athletes used their mobile devices to upload video to their Twitter accounts, as well as their Instagram stories.

Over the course of the 2016 Olympic games, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter saw millions of interactions on their platforms. Facebook cited 277 million users had 1.5 billion interactions globally related to the Olympic Games. Another noteworthy mention is Instagram, where 131 million users had 96 million interactions.

What is interesting is the sheer amount of people who utilized mobile devices to stay up to date on games. I can’t even fathom what the Olympics will look like in years to come in terms of social engagement.