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Indianapolis 500 "Centennial Era" logo
In the spirit that it is better to give than to receive, I tried a social media experiment on Race Day.
In an earlier post, I lamented that the Indy 500 didn't really "get" social media so I put up a very "rough" social media presence by aggregating various content that was readily available on the Web. Not being very satisfied with this version, I decided to "dress it up" by looking for more content and making it somewhat more attractive. What resulted was much better and notably, I didn't have to create ANY content in order to produce something that was actually quite fun to watch as I listened to the race. Since I live IN Indianapolis where the ABC live telecast was blacked out, the social media features did indeed add another dimension to the experience. The magnitude of the event and a critical mass of social media-savvy participants actually generated a rich data stream of social media activity. Even the mobile version had content, e.g. traffic alerts, for those who were actually attending the race. Especially if you used the mobile version on Race Day, I'd really like to hear from you in the comments, but any feedback is welcome. I've already received much encouragement from social media-savvy folks like Steve Dalton who used it while in northwest Indiana and former Indianapolis resident Rodney Rumford who just launched TweetPhoto.
What is missing is a means to ENGAGE the community via social media withOUT requiring them to be sufficiently social media-savvy to "do" Twitter, FriendFeed, or any other social media service. That will be my objective when I try this again. The next time will most likely be Gen Con Indy 2009 during August 13-16 unless I find another significant event before then. Gen Con should generate a reasonable stream of social media activity (especially IF I can get Gen Con to "get" social media) since Twitter is now much more mainstream than it was when I tried last year.
If you're a Gen Con fan, let me know where I can find sources of social media activity and what Gen Con participants would want because I'm even less familiar with Gen Con than I am with the Indy 500 because I'm NOT much of a gaming enthusiast...I have little enough time for social media!
Comments
Really nice work on the netvibes page. Been going since I was a kid and wondering when's the day that online tools will overcome the ABC local blackout. Keep it up!
Agree wholeheartedly will add more thoughts on twitter too
McMatt:
Well, a SlingBox (slingmedia.com) or Orb (www.orb.com) has ALREADY overcome the TV blackout! :-)
Well, you know Gen Con does have a Facebook, is working on a twitter, and we have pretty good fourms at community.gencon.com; come by and talk to the superfans on the fourms yourself anytime. :)
There were several of us blogging. I was one of 8 bloggers the Motor Speedway invited out to blog about the race, but I was the only non-race blogger to be invited. I was doing a post for every crash, talking about details and causes, and excerpts from interviews. Another guy was doing live blogging, making periodic updates for significant events, like pits, yellow flags, lead changes, etc.
Reading blogs like that didn't require a social media investment, but rather just an Internet browser with a refresh button.
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