IndianapolisMotorSpeedway.com
With the 93rd Indianapolis 500 happening next Sunday, I figured that it was "now or never" for a review of social media associated with the Centennial Era of the venerable motorsports event.
The short answer to the question posed in the headline is "sorta".
Before I give you my long answer, let me preface my review with a disclosure that I am NOT much of a race fan (believe it or not, such folks DO live in Indianapolis! :-) Therefore, you should realize my "limitations" and I do recognize that I might be overlooking some social media features associated with the event, but of course, I am certainly qualified to evaluate social media!
The Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS) has featured the social media aspects of this year's race. They include a Facebook page and a Twitter account affiliated with the Speedway. Notably, a number of the IndyCar drivers and teams have a Facebook presence and/or Twitter account. While watching the tweetstream today (rather than watching the last day of qualifications), I was struck that IMS is missing a golden opportunity because it does NOT seem to be engaging its fans very actively and on its Facebook feed, it isn't doing much better. Therefore, I have to conclude that the Indy 500 doesn't really "get" social media!
To help out, I have "thrown together" an Indy 500 social media presence similar to the one that I'm building for "Indy Social Media" that leverages social media aggregation services fed by user-generated content, e.g. Flickr photos and Delicious bookmarks. I have also included some aspects of the Twitter timeline, including the drivers' tweets. Unlike Indy Social Media, I have just put this together for the sake of demonstrating how we might get a better feel for what is happening in the social graph associated with this significant event. An even "rougher" mobile-friendly version is at http://m.indy500info.info
Let me know what you think of it and I hope that it helps the social media-savvy Indy 500 fans to get more out of their festivities during the coming week. I hope that it also helps the Indy 500 to "get" social media!
Comments
Actually, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is starting to embrace social media. I am one of 8 bloggers that have been invited to cover the 500 as part of their media coverage. In fact, I'm the only non-auto racing blogger in the pool.
The Speedway even has a Twitter feed (@indytalk), and several fans, radio stations, and even drivers are Twittering.
The great thing about the 500 is that it's not one entity, but a big group of individuals all working together toward one goal. So teams are on social media, drivers, journalists. They're inviting bloggers, allowing their own staff to blog and Tweet, and some of the drivers are even blogging (Stanton Barrett, who unfortunately did not make the race this year, is actually a pretty good writer). Fans are posting their own stories and photos on their blogs, Flickr and Picasa, and Tweeting whatever comes to mind.
Thomas - great post! Are you utilizing Ping.fm as well?
Erik:
I'm very aware of the distributed nature of the user-generated content. That's precisely WHY I aggregated some of that content on IndySocialMedia.info on the "Indy 500" tab in hopes of making others aware of that content as well because I'm afraid that many of them are ONLY aware of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway's rather tentative (I realize that they're "new" at it :-) social media efforts on Facebook and Twitter.
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