The Olympics and Social Media

Have you noticed anything different about the Olympics this time around? Many are commenting on the abundance of social media being interjected into the games this summer, as this blog post mentions. On the NBC Olympics page, they have a section for mobile web, alerts, TV, and video. In addition they have a section for live video. When doing a search on YouTube, I came across thousands of Videos relating to the topic. Several companies have joined the fray as well, with McDonalds creating the viral game called 'The Lost Ring' and Lenovo maintaining the blog titled 'Voices of the Olympic Games' with posts from athletes at the games this year. It is interesting to see that organizations are recognizing the impact of online communities, and utilizing community 2.0 tools to interact. What are your experiences with this, and do you think that in the aftermath of the Olympic games, more organizations are going to realize the importance of utilizing social media?