Olympics and the Election

I do about 4 hours of daily online video and social media research. What I keep seeing over and over again is two main stories. First is the Olympics and second is the upcoming US Presidential Election. So I figured I should voice my opinions on both of them.

A few days ago I wrote a blog titled Olympics + Web Video = Success. While there have been millions of viewers and hundreds of millions of streams, the estimated amount that NBC's Olympics site has earned is only a paltry $5.75 million in ad revenues accounting for just 1.1% of the total web video spend for 2008. I trust that by the time the 2012 Olympic games arrive in London the web video market will be much more mature and lucrative for NBC or whoever secures the rights to stream the Olympic content.

The election this year is really shaping up as perhaps the most exciting race ever documented in US history. Barack has surpassed Kevin Rose (co-founder of Digg.com and DiggNation) in Twitter followers, and is leading the surge in web video and online popularity overall. If he does in fact go on to win in November, he may have the web and people of the web to thank first.