Listen to the noises coming out of the local companies, and it’s clear that they feel good about this. Former Facebook executive Joanna Shields, now working for the government’s Tech City organization, said it would help turn a “vibrant community” into a “global leader in tech innovation”. And the head of Google Campus, the internet giant’s local bridge-building effort, said it would “help to establish London as a global center for tech entrepreneurs”.

London’s time, you’d assume, is now.

But here’s the message I took away from it all: it’s time to step things up.

Promised unfulfilled

Britain’s government has been one of the biggest cheerleaders of London’s nascent startup scene over the last few years. While the Old Street area has been a center for the country’s digital economy ever since the birth of interactive media, the decision to create an official “Tech City” movement has seen a concerted effort to court technology companies.

This is for a few reasons. It’s partly an attempt to find some light in the economic gloom. It’s partly an attempt by Prime Minister David Cameron to appear connected, forward-thinking and switched on (look at his relationship with Google to understand the positioning here). And it’s partly an attempt to turn the legacy of the Olympics into something more by enticing big tech firms to the area — even if they don’t contribute much in the way of tax revenue to the British economy.

But Cameron’s commitment to bolstering the startup economy is actually even deeper than that.

Right now, I think the British government — or at least it’s gov.uk team, which is rebuilding government services to be “digital by default” — is actually the most exciting startup in the country.

It’s dealing with big problems in a smart way, tackling and operating in a lean, mean, aggressive manner: a world-leading approach that Tim O’Reilly recently said set the standard for governments. And to do that, it’s hired some of the most impressive coding, design and strategic talent around. Over the last couple of years a sequence of great talent — mainly from London, many of them friends of mine — have been sucked into the gov.uk machine as they try to reinvent the way Britons connect to their public services.

Don’t get me wrong: tackling big problems is great, and the work that Government Digital Service is doing is extremely important. But I think it’s an indictment of the local scene that so many great people are choosing to work for the civil service, and that the apparently thriving scene around Old Street seems to be more and more reliant on government boosters.

So how do you fix that?

The challenge to Britain’s startup community

A few months ago, I wrote that London’s tech community was looking at “golden moment”: a confluence of circumstances that could see the region really push on and make good on its promise.

Now, however, I’m less optimistic. There are lots of great companies and strong ideas floating around the UK startup scene, but right now there are too many poseurs and very few world beaters. The latent potential is not being achieved, and the signal is being crowded out by all the noise of bearded startup hipsters tapping away aimlessly in local coffee shops.

Still, I believe this is a glass-half-full situation. Those who are really taking the bit between their teeth and developing serious businesses are doing very well. Moshi Monsters has turned into a massive children’s brand; online loans company Wonga is doing things that banks can’t; innovative smaller outfits like BERG and Makie and others are making waves in their industries.

But the scene needs an injection of real talent and ambition — in part from the same people who have been subsumed into the government’s digital efforts. While they get down to Important Public Service stuff, the hangers-on have fallen into a self-congratulatory funk, drunk on applause from boosters and ego massages from investors looking to pump up their own interests.

Fortunately, most some of the talented individuals working on gov.uk are contractors, not staff. When their time is up, they’ll be back out. Let’s hope they do something great when they’re free again.

In the meantime, listen up, Silicon Roundabout: don’t buy into the mirage of success. It’s time to stop combing your mustaches and build something important.

Update: Mike Bracken, who heads the GDS project, has been in touch to say “most of our people are civil servants, as we’ve removed loads of contractors as per government policy”.

Glass of wine photo courtesy of Flickr user Davide Restivo

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Will cloud computing push the BRIC market to the front?
• Facebook’s tactical retreat on privacy
• Google and the Ghost of Silicon Valley Past

Aereo is using a unique structure to get around some older legal rulings, but essentially what it is doing is broadening the way people access broadcast TV — and in the process taking some of the control over distribution from the broadcasters. Folks can record shows and access broadcast TV on any device iPads, iPhones, AppleTV and Roku devices via the web — something that is difficult for many subscribers who may not have a cable subscription or who want to see older episodes of shows that might not still be playing on the broadcasters’ own web sites. PC and Android support is coming later this summer.

This allows time shifting, storing shows and fast forwarding through advertising. It also undercuts broadcasters’ value to cable companies that pay retransmission fees for access to some broadcast channels. For example, a person using Aereo could have watched the Olympics opening ceremony (yes, the edited NBC version) a day later even if they didn’t have cable. For people– and there are more than you might think — who can’t get access to the over the air TV signals (it can be challenging for apartments dwellers or those in valleys) this would have given them an option outside of buying cable.

Unfortunately for those outside of New York City, the Aereo service is not available to you (the company is promising to expand soon). But for those who can get it, here’s the new pricing plan:

At $1 a day, this means people on the go, could use their iPad and a Wi-Fi network to watch a one-time sporting event in real time, or record it for later. At $8 a month it offers a credible alternative to Hulu, which also offers many broadcast television shows and is owned by some of the broadcasters. In fact, Aereo might be considered better since you can skip ads and if you record the shows they won’t slip off the service after a week or two. Plus, if Hulu goes to a model where users can only access certain shows if they have a cable subscription it becomes much less valuable to cord cutters.

Judging from this pricing plan, Aereo is both using a marketing gimmick with its one hour free, but it’s also clearly stating a value for over the air broadcast content. And that value isn’t one that the broadcasters (and likely content owners will like).

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Controversy, courtrooms and the cloud in Q1
• Connected Consumer Q2: Digital music meets the cloud; e-book growth explodes
• What the shift to the cloud means for the future EPG

The app’s target audience is an exclusive bunch of folks, the kind who want travel tips and ask questions of each other, from “which yacht to purchase to where the best restaurants are.” Membership in ASmallWorld is by invitation only from a current member. The app’s intended purchase is to help members manage their personal and business lives with help from other members.

PaidContent covered the group in 2008, noting that it counted Paris Hilton and Naomi Campbell as members at the time and hoped to grow to 1 million members within three years. It currently has about 715,000 members.

The app will allow members Foursquare-esque services such as “meet-up” and “check-in” tools, which CEO Sabine Heller noted in the press release would prove useful as members travel to London for the Olympics this summer and want to connect with each other.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• LinkedIn offers few competitive openings
• Google doesn’t like walled gardens — except its own
• Facebook’s tactical retreat on privacy

And once again, U.S. consumers don’t get it. Sure, people are frustrated because they can’t easily stream the Olympics online without a cable subscription, and there will always be sports fans who don’t want the edited version of The Games with the life stories on athletes and dramatic cuts. But frankly, for now, NBC doesn’t really care what those people want.

How dare @NBCOlympics cut the 7/7 tribute from the #Olympics opening ceremony. Disgraceful. ow.ly/czaOk—
Jamie Klenetsky (@jamieklenetsky) July 28, 2012

NBC paid $1.18 billion for the right to broadcast the Olympics and it will be a cold day in hell before it dilutes the amount it can charge advertisers or the value it has to cable providers. In many ways, even though NBC depends on huge audiences to justify the rates it’s charging advertisers, it can afford to alienate some of them. And it’s worth noting that there are probably millions of happy families who watched the opening ceremony last night and had little idea it could be any other way.

In the U.S., people who want to stream are a highly vocal minority, but it’s a minority that is growing. And while NBC may not care that I — as one of the between 3.6 or 9 million cord cutters — couldn’t authenticate to see the opening ceremony via the web or streaming, maybe someone should.

NBC broadcast an edited and time-delayed version of the opening ceremony last night over the air, but I couldn’t see that either. I can’t get over-the-air TV since the switch from analog to digital TV signals in 2009, because my home just doesn’t seem to be in the right location. Even satellites don’t work. The only way I could watch NBC’s broadcast of the ceremony was if I paid for cable, but that’s not something I want to do just to watch a once-every-two-year event. And anyway, I shouldn’t have to buy cable to see the opening ceremony, since NBC is using the public airwaves for free to deliver broadcast TV. Glenn Fleishman via Twitter suggested that the FCC ought to investigate this, and maybe it should.

I believe FCC should look into NBC, which broadcasts over air, restricting Olympics video online to cable subscribers. Fundamentally wrong—
Glenn Fleishman (@GlennF) July 28, 2012

But really what I think needs to occur is a realization that until the business models right themselves in the TV industry, consumers, especially cord cutters, are going to get screwed out of some content. It’s not “fair,” but as the population of people who demand streaming grows, and they in turn are seen a valuable demographic to advertisers, then perhaps the next Summer Games will give consumers more of what they want, where and when they want it.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock user Padmayogini
.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Controversy, courtrooms and the cloud in Q1
• Q4 Wrap-up: SOPA and the future of digital content
• Here Come the Social TV Apps

But it’s not just the games that have the British capital humming right now. Over the past week a string of announcements have underscored London’s reputation in technology and shown a glimpse of what the future could hold.

First we heard that Amazon plans to set up a new center for its global streaming media operations in town.Then came the announcement of a Facebook engineering office in the city, its first outside the U.S. And now we hear that Microsoft is expanding its presence in London too, with a powerful new Xbox studio being built.

This triple whammy of announcements has confirmed what was already apparent to those who have been watching closely: London is finally starting to exert its influence and become a serious player in the international technology scene.

This is not news to those on the inside, who know that London has been building up over the past few years. Google may have opened its new Campus startup hub in East London just a few months ago, but the search giant has had a hive-like office in the west of the city for several years. In fact, it’s where many of its important mobile services were developed. Microsoft, meanwhile, has built a strong gaming pedigree in the city by acquiring British studios like Lionhead as well as operating Borg-like corporate offices in the country for years (albeit from the dreary satellite town of Reading, 40 miles west).

The truth is, though, that this week’s announcements make an impressive combo.

No coincidence

It’s worth remembering that the timing here is orchestrated, at least in part. In fact, much of the news is a construction built and encouraged by the British government, which is desperate to put forward its best side as the world’s eyes zoom in on it. Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, who visited the city on Thursday, confirmed as much when he said Google’s investment in local startups was in large part down to “aggressive government support.”

Officials have contorted themselves in all sorts of ways to interest Silicon Valley’s finest. Google, for example, is one of a number of technology companies that can boast cozy relationships with the U.K. government, and Schmidt himself is an advisor to Prime Minister David Cameron.

Viewed from that perspective, perhaps this week’s announcements are little more than publicity — baubles intended to capture the attention of those looking at London for, perhaps, the first time in a long time. And there’s evidence to back that up. Facebook, for example, has actually had its London office for a long while: It merely chose to announce it officially just a few days before the Olympic opening ceremony.

But while I have long been skeptical of the government’s involvement in what it cringingly calls “tech city,” there’s no doubt that something very real is happening on the city’s streets.

London’s secret contribution to the global startup economy is being talked about a little more; new jobs are coming in from big international names; and a generation of blockbuster companies are being developed: Ambitious outfits like Wonga, Mind Candy and Huddle are all well on their way to becoming the billion-dollar businesses that Europe’s technology scene craves.

The government’s involvement in their success is really minimal. What is happening today is the fruit of work put in three, four, five years ago or more. But when combined with Downing Street’s unabashed eyelid-fluttering at multinational tech corps, what we’re seeing in front of us are the seeds being sown for another generation of really world-beating companies to emerge over the next few years.

A necessary change

For Britain as a whole, the revolution can’t come soon enough.

The country, full of shuttered stores and struggling with high unemployment levels, is desperately looking for a new lease on life. The wrecking ball that has smashed its way through the economy over the past few years has destroyed many of the politely ignored hypocrisies of British life: the self-interested politicians, the gangster press and a dominant, corrupt, venal banking sector that has spent years milking and twisting the system to its own benefit. All of these are blown open now, and nobody is happy.

But let’s not kid ourselves. London’s potential shift from a Dickensian sprawl to a gleaming technopolis doesn’t come without costs. Even though the big corporates are moving in to colonize London, the range of tax loopholes left open to them means their multibillion-dollar businesses aren’t directly benefitting the city – or Britain at large.

Still, in the end there is something infectious about all of this activity.

There is precious momentum, genuine activity and a sense that what is happening could be a vision of something better to come. London is getting ready for its Olympic close-up, and its tech entrepreneurs are starting to think, perhaps for the first time, about going for gold.

Gold medal copyright Shutterstock/David Fowler, London riots used under Creative Commons license courtesy of Alanstanton

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The future of mobile: a segment analysis by GigaOM Pro
• GigaOM Euro 20: the European startups to watch
• How consumer media will change in 2013

The app, which launched in beta on Thursday, allows people to share and comment on video as they watch it — potentially allowing for real time commentary and conversation to happen directly on Facebook. And with the event taking place in London this summer, the BBC will be the official Olympic broadcaster and have direct control of every single feed of video pouring out of the Games.

There’s one catch, however: like the corporation’s iPlayer service, which is mainly limited to British audiences, users outside the U.K. need not apply.

The app is already up and running with live video from the Wimbledon tennis championships, which features six live streams from around the courts — but by the time the Games kick off in a month, that will quadruple to 24 streams all viewable inside the social network.

In a blog post, product manager Aaron Scullion explained what the Facebook integration could offer that the ordinary iPlayer service would not.

The app is a BBC Sport service, but is entirely delivered within Facebook.
This means that we can use the social functionality Facebook offers to enhance the experience.
For example, when you watch a match in Facebook, you can see how many people – and how many people you’re friends with on Facebook – are watching that same event.

As well as that, the fact that you’re watching the match is shared with your friends, via an update in their Facebook news feed. (You can easily remove each update with a single click if you don’t want to share at a particular time).

You can also see which matches are proving most popular on Facebook, and switch to a different video stream on that basis.

The corporation is pitching this as a way to help license fee payers get more value out of the Games, but the reality is that it’s also part of the BBC’s increasing ambition to make its video available on every platform. It also, interestingly, includes advertising — though that will be withdrawn when the Olympics take place due to rules put in place by the International Olympic Committee. However, as far as the rules from the BBC itself, the situation is less clear cut. The BBC says it won’t make any money from this venture (it does not advertise inside the U.K.) but clearly it opens a door to a service that is available outside Britain and runs ads, just as BBC News does on its international site, for example.

It’s a significant move that may not necessarily broaden the BBC’s reach — it is already one of the most ubiquitous brands in Britain — but could provide a lifeline for athletics fans stuck at work while the Olympics take place across the country.

Olympic rings photograph copyright Shutterstock/Steve Heap

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Frenemy mine: The pros and cons of social partnerships for online media companies
• Where the next-generation console fits in today’s video game market
• How consumer media will change in 2013

News coming from Paris tells of a fresh initiative to bring free wireless access to public transport, bringing the city’s offering more in line with its cross-channel rival.

Thanks to WiFi provider GOWEX, a range of different public spaces across Paris will now have free wireless access — including railway stations, some RER commuter lines, and bus stops. It also includes three Metro stations: Place-d’Italie, Pont-de-Sèvres and Chaussée-d’Antin.

As Le Monde reports, it’s not perfect. But something, surely, is better than nothing:

The company claims that its service will eventually be deployed to other stations.

Access will only be possible in the stations themselves, not inside moving trains. Users wishing to use the free GOWEX service on their tablet or phone will have to install an application that states the rate will be 1Mbps.

There is already WiFi for some Metro travelers, thanks to an initiative from telco SFR that covers 50 stations. But that’s only for subscribers — not everyone. This move is much more like London, which is working with Virgin Media ahead of the Olympics to provide free access across some 80 underground stations.

And this is a trend that’s not just on one side of the Atlantic, either. On Tuesday Google and Boingo teamed up to provide a similar service in six NYC stations in what’s being called “the summer of free Wi-Fi”. Some of the connectivity was already in place, but it’s an interesting move — although the implication of the marketing push is that when the summer comes to an end, so will the giveaway.

Image courtesy of Flickr User bredgur

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Google and the Ghost of Silicon Valley Past
• Report: Monetizing Digital Content
• LTE-Advanced: what it is and isn’t

But now Uber is getting ready to step up to its biggest challenge yet: London.

The company is preparing to hit the British capital just in time for the Olympics, and the reality is that it’s a venture that has the potential to make — or break — the business.

Europe is already proving tricky

The London launch has been a long time coming. Over the last few months, Uber has been quietly gearing up to open in London, staffing up and making regular visits ahead of a planned debut that could happen as soon as this week. A few test drivers are now in place, and last week hand-picked attendees at the LeWeb conference were given the chance to use the service too — presumably in order to build buzz among early adopters.

It’s definitely making progress. But the same approach was taken in Paris last December, and yet that seems to have not been a roaring success. I’m hearing that the number of registered Uber drivers is just 100 six months later; a figure Kalanick didn’t refute when I asked him about it.

And while Paris might be confusing, London is a monster. It’s a vastly complex, confusing city in which Uber will face competitive threats the like of which it hasn’t seen anywhere else. Can it stand up to the test?

An uber is not a black cab

London’s black cabs are as important to the city’s identity as yellow cabs are to New York’s, but they’re also a much stronger rival to any incomers. London’s highly regulated cabbies are legendary for their intimate knowledge of the city’s streets and while they aren’t cheap, well, neither is Uber.

Think that doesn’t matter? Customers demand a lot in London.

First time with @Uber_LON. Pimping car but clueless driver – makes you appreciate those who have passed the Knowledge. I guess SF is easier?

— Jon Gold (@jongold) June 23, 2012

Plus black cabs are pretty available in central London (despite complaints) and you can flag down a black cab on the street, or order one to come and pick you up by calling up a company like Dial a Cab, which is effectively a black cab aggregator, and has developed its own app to make things easier.

And black cabs are just one of many competitors that Uber will have to best. There are more rival startups in this space than I can count, and they aren’t simply clones of the San Francisco company. Some, like the well-backed Hailo, focus on black cabs. Others, like UbiCabs, are pointed toward the lower end of the private hire (minicab) market.

There are more, too: services like Taxizapp, Get Taxi, Tweet a London Cab, London Taxi App, Taxi Square and many more.

These not only provide some competition to Uber; they add to the noise that it has to cut through. And some of them are very well connected to the driver population that is vital to making these services work. Those bonds can be hard to break.

Oh, and then there are the big dogs

But Uber’s biggest rival in London comes from neither the world of black cabs or the world of tech startups. Private hire firm Addison Lee is the most significant player in the British capital’s upscale private driver market that Uber wants to dominate. It’s been around for a while, and it’s doing well: the company’s last financial filings say it ended up with £5.5 million of profit last year ($8.5 million) on revenues of £127 million ($198 million).

Addison Lee may not be liked by all, but it is ubiquitous, connected, competitive and extremely aggressive.

Drivers I’ve spoken to suggest that their contracts with Addison Lee will preclude them from working for Uber as well — and those who care about the money they make (which is all of them, of course) are much more likely to stick with a sure thing than take a risk on a venture-funded company from California.

So what does Uber do?

The company is stuck in a difficult situation. If it’s really aiming for global domination, it can’t ignore London. With a complicated mesh of public and private services, London is an incredibly competitive and valuable market… and that combination makes it so attractive and so dangerous to new entrants.

Uber’s challenge — and it’s something that Kalanick seems to recognize, at least — is to provide black cab-style service at prices that are competitive with other private hire rivals. That’s tough. Sure, it’s got venture money to help it get there — but it’s hard to see how it can sustain massive losses in one market over a long period of time.

With the Olympics just around the corner, winning London would be a huge prize. But scooping the gold medal is going to be tough, and Uber might just have to settle for something less. But will it be happy to come home with silver, bronze — or even worse?

Kalanick seems aware of the challenge: “London is the gold standard,” he told me.

But in another conversation I had with the company recently, an Uber spokesman brushed aside the size of the obstacles facing it. He told me that he’d heard this sort of argument before — for example, when the company hit New York.

“Just get people using Uber and they’ll know what’s different about it,” was the thrust of the argument.

That’s not a strategy, that’s a prayer. It seems highly unlikely that things will come so easy.

Profile of cab used under Creative Commons license courtesy of Steve Bott; Addison Lee image courtesy of panmike1

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• 12 tech leaders’ resolutions for 2012
• Google and the Ghost of Silicon Valley Past
• Will cloud computing push the BRIC market to the front?

Launched to coincide with the London 2012 Olympics, the app includes a range of fitness and diet challenges, as well as workouts sponsored by Olympians Michael Johnson and Summer Sanders and Olympic hopefuls Kevin Durant and Alex Morgan.

Using the Olympics as a social catalyst, Linda Boff, executive director of global digital marketing of GE, said, “It’s a platform that helps people get motivated and lean into better health.”

For GE, which makes a range of health tech products, including MRIs and CT scanners, and Facebook, which counts nearly a billion people among its users, the partnership makes sense.  Aside from the PR value the app gets them ahead of the London Games this summer, both companies have an interest in consumer health. Through its Healthymagination campaign, GE already funds health research and offers workplace and consumer engagement programs. Earlier this year, Facebook announced a program that lets people share their organ donation status with their social networks.

As the popularity of health apps and fitness trackers such as MapMyRun and Nike’s Fuel band have shown, this is an area in which consumers are willing to spend their time and money. It’s also an area that’s attracting more and more attention from entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. In New York, for example, two health tech incubators, StartUp Health and Blueprint Health, announced their first classes of graduates in the past six months. Facebook and GE would do well to tap into the momentum that’s already underway.

Facebook users can already share their fitness goals and milestones with friends through various apps and trackers. And some Facebook users look to Facebook friends to keep them stick to diet programs. But Kevin Knight, who works in creative strategy for Facebook, said the HealthyShare app bakes in social insights from Facebook researchers and internal anthropologists to make it more effective. For example, he said, the app rewards users with points for both doing an activity and liking a friend’s activity because research shows people are more likely to succeed when they build off each other’s successes. The app also prominently displays all the friends who have joined the app, as well as their activities, to give members more “social proof” to keep them motivated. (That’s the same basic principle behind sponsored stories and other marketing efforts on Facebook.)

Given Facebook and GE’s obvious technical and engineering muscle (not to mention corporate bank accounts), I was surprised that the app doesn’t include any “quantified self”-type features that would let people track their progress in a data-driven way. People can share information from Runkeeper or Nike’s Fuel band, but there’s no plug in, so it’s not automatic. I was also surprised that the app doesn’t include incentive features (beyond social incentives) like those from startups DailyFeats and EveryMove, which give consumers real-life rewards for accomplishing health goals.

But Boff said the companies’ interest in health is “long-term” and that this app is just the beginning.

“[The app] was launched with maximum accessibility in mind,” she said, adding that it’s just “step one.”

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution
• Sector RoadMap: Content personalization in 2013
• Best practices in optimizing content for social engagement

According to tickets’ entry terms for event spectators:

“Images, video and sound recordings of the Games taken by a Ticket Holder cannot be used for any purpose other than for private and domestic purposes and a Ticket Holder may not license, broadcast or publish video and/or sound recordings, including on social networking websites and the Internet more generally.”

Athletes, too, are prohibited from taking still photos, video or audio for anything but personal use, according to guidelines which date back to 2010.

It may seem incongruous for the emerging social media generation, but the IOC wants to protect the broadcast rights won by license holders including NBC, which is paying $4.38 billion for exclusive U.S. coverage of four Olympic Games.

And it also wants to ensure the hundreds of accredited journalists who will descend on London get their money’s worth, retaining their historic role as documenters-in-chief. The committee’s guidelines for athletes warn them off overlapping media, too:

“It is acceptable for a participant or any other accredited person to do a personal posting, blog  or tweet. However, any such postings, blogs or tweets must be in a first-person, diary-type format and should not be in the role of a journalist.”

In a world where lines between consumers and producers have blurred, the Olympics is relying on familiar old lines of demarcation to safeguard the Olympics as we know it, bankrolled by large broadcast deals and massive sponsorship arrangements.

But that doesn’t mean the Olympics is trying to smother social media entirely…

• It has launched its own Athletes’ Hub to aggregate tweets and Facebook status updates from over 1,000 participating athletes.
• And, showing it does want fans to post some photos, the tournament has launched a web contest called ICopyU (ironic, given the broadcast copyright concerns) that encourages viewers to mimic famous athletes’ poses.

Will this officially-mandated social media strategy win out over the threat of crowd-produced content? The IOC says it “will continue to monitor Olympic on-line content”.

But even the tournament appears resigned to losing some control. The chairman of local Olympic delivery agency Locog, Keith Mills, tells BBC News:

“Media rights are sold – can we police everything these days? Absolutely not, the internet has changed the world and we’re not going to be silly.

“But the reality is that we live in an internet world where Facebook downloads and uploads are happening every day of the week and there’s not much we can do about it.”

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock user [anbibyte].

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Sector RoadMap: Social customer service in 2013
• Sector RoadMap: Content personalization in 2013
• Frenemy mine: The pros and cons of social partnerships for online media companies