Olympics 2012 A Mobile Game
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Phew: Tweeting, Googling and Facebook should be an Olympic sport.


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London Olympics 2012 has become a mobile event with mass audiences jumping online via their smartphone or iPad to research athletes, events and scores of the Games, says Google.

Olympic audiences globally are now watching the games on TV, laptops and tablets and then juming to their mobile device Googling for info.

In its first week, Olympics 2012 related searches on mobile devices grew a massive tenfold compared to the previous week.

Google searches for former Beetle Paul McCartney surged as he performed Hey Jude at the end of the opening ceremony.

In fact, at some moments during the Games, there have been more searches on McCartney on iPads, other tabs and smartphones than on the good ol’ PC, according to Google’s blog.

So, it’s offical: London 2012 Games is a “multi-screen event” like the Super Bowl, Oscars, and Eurovision, but on a more global scale.

In Oz this trend was particularly pronounced with 45% of all Olympics searches performed via mobile (and tab) on July 27th and 28th – on par with UK’s 46% and above European countries 30%.

In OZ, Foxtel’s streaming Olympics app for the iPad has been very successful, while free-to-air Channel Nine has trumped over its Pay TV rival on the viewing stakes, attracting over 1.5m viewers on all its broadcasts, compared to Foxtel’s 600,000 nightly, reports the Australian Media.

 

In all, 2.5 million Aussie viewers are tuning into the Games nightly, far execceding predictions.

Google also noticed an interesting pattern occuring on island nations like Caymen Islands and Malta – tablet searches was almost equal to smartphone, or in some cases outran it.

Why? Because large numbers of tourists carry their beloved tab on holidays with them.