There is no event more obviously tailored to the internet's capabilities than the Olympics. It combines an enormous number of statistics derived from a vast array of sports, and sets them before an actively engaged worldwide population to discuss, tweet, like and recommend. It allows for fetishistic watching and rewatching of Spain in the water polo or of Chris Hoy's front wheel. Olympian predictability makes it an ideal event to throw money and journalists and innovation at, as if there were no tomorrow, or indeed no other news that needed covering.
没有什么能比奥林匹克赛事更加体现互联网的优势了。每天关于奥林匹克的大幅报导和数据分析，让人们有形形色色的话题来讨论，微博和推荐。一些体育骨灰级粉丝甚至会一遍又一遍地回放西班牙队的水球表演或者克里斯·霍依参加的自行车赛。关于奥林匹克赛事的预测也成了最热话题。媒体不惜人力物力，花费重金，追踪报导相关奥运信息。在奥运面前，明天变远，一切其他的事情好像都变得无关紧要了。
The Olympics in many ways mirrors what happens to information itself in a live and connected world. A small number of events gather a huge amount of attention, but the attention is split over many different types of consumption. A social event only becomes more social under the lens of global interest.
奥运比赛在很大程度上反映了在这个联系日益紧密的世界中，信息本身的传递过程。一些很小的信息在传播中被不断放大。无数人关注它，但是聚焦点又各有不同。由此看来，社会事件只有放在国际视角下，才会更加具有社会性。
There are 21, 000 fully accredited journalists at the Games, and possibly as many as 40, 000 uncredited ones. The web traffic statistics are, as one might expect, showing dizzying levels of increase. The Guardian site, for instance, has seen unique users reach more than 4.5 million in one day – the highest numbers since the London riots of almost exactly a year ago.
大约有2.1万专业记者和4万左右的非专业记者活跃在奥林匹克的赛事报导中。关于奥林匹克的报导数量，也正以惊人的速度在增长。英国《卫报》网站每日用户来访量高达450万人次，而这个数字是整整一年前伦敦骚乱以后最高的。
Yet a rise of 30% across its network seems modest by comparison with the BBC, which has seen a 100% increase in its sports traffic across every one of its services. The red button interactive guide to all sports had been used by 20 million people in the first few days of the event, according to the impressively frequent tweets of Roger Mosey, the head of Olympics coverage. The official Olympics site set up live cameras at events, which quickly gathered hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers. The whole shooting match (and yes, the shooting match had nearly 4 million BBC viewers thanks to Peter Wilson) reaffirms the articles of faith concerning mass media events, but on different terms.
然而和BBC相比，卫报访问量30%的涨幅并不算大。在BBC网站报导体育赛事的一版中，访问量基本有一倍的涨幅。据罗格·莫塞-----BBC奥运报导的负责人介绍，比赛刚开始的几天，有2千万的人使用了网站上关于伦敦奥运的红色向导按钮。此外，奥林匹克的官方网站上也设立了比赛直播，这吸引了成千上万的人在推特上跟随它的进展。整场射击比赛（有将近4百万人在BBC上观看了这场比赛）再次证明了相关媒体报道在不同层面上的真实性。
What can be extrapolated from these waves of positive statistics are a number of universal truths about the nature of digital coverage and audiences. First, the relationship between media operators and technology is at its best when it is actively trying to give people what they want. Secondly, it is at its worst (as NBC's peerlessly awful efforts in the US show) when preventing people from getting what they want. The howls of Americans that NBC prevented from accessing live events, in order to save highlights for the primetime shows, were loud enough to be heard across the Atlantic. For broadcasters to construct schedules and programmes around the premise that the internet does not exist is foolish.
从这些奥运的数据中，我们可以推断出一些数字化时代关于新闻报道和受众的普遍真理。首先，如果想要利用科技来服务大众，获取信息，那么它的功能可以在传媒中发挥得淋漓尽致。但是，如果想要利用科技来阻碍信息的传播，让大众得不到他们想知道的，那么这是徒劳无功的。为了让更多的美国人在黄金时段观看电视节目，美国NBC台没有直播奥运赛事（译者注：美国NBC电台独家垄断了伦敦奥运会的转播权。为了让更多的人收看开幕式，NBC电台延时播放伦敦奥运会开幕式三个多小时，这引起了许多美国人的不满。），这引起了广大美国人的抗议。他们愤怒的声音甚至到达了大西洋彼岸的英国。不顾大众意愿，主观制定电视节目单，并且蔑视互联网的力量，这样做是非常愚蠢的。
Audiences could not believe that there was live coverage of everything available, yet they could not access it. Frantic hacking of proxy servers and the BBC iPlayer ensued, but NBC stuck to its guns of partial coverage (BBC radio programmes in the US were also blocked for the duration of the games, lest someone accidentally heard 5 Live's description of the UK losing the diving). For those who wanted to know who was responsible for NBC's decisions not to cover the opening ceremony or large tranches of the Games live, the Independent's Guy Adams helpfully published a name and a corporate email address on Twitter, only to have his account suspended. Isn't this what the second screen is all about? If NBC had followed Mosey's lead, none of this would have happened.
大众不会相信会有他们无法看到的直播。因此，许多黑客开始攻击代理电脑或者BBC的iplayer。然而NBC仍然一意孤行（在美国，连BBC广播节目也在奥运比赛期间遭到屏蔽）。很多人想知道谁应该为NBC台奥运开幕式以及许多场比赛延时负责，对此，《独立报》的盖·亚当斯发了一条关于这个的推特。结果，他的账号被禁用了。可是，这难道不是互联网应该起到的作用吗？如果NBC可以像BBC一样，那么这些就都不会发生了。
Giving people what they want might be a stated aim of commercial media, but it is seldom the actual truth. In another wrinkle to London 2012's otherwise smooth PR facade, an enterprising individual was blocked after writing a piece of code that sent a tweet every time spare tickets became available.
给大众提供他们想要知道的信息，这应该是商业媒体的明确目标，然而现实却不尽如人意。关于这一点，在奥运期间，一位商人编了一条代码，这使他的推特在每次有空余奥运票的时候都自动发一条微博，结果因此他的推特也被禁用了。
When live events attract a worldwide audience, the audience now brings its own infrastructure with it. The "second screen" is not a passive experience, but one where people share information and make up for the deficits of what is on the first screen. London 2012 is the first " social media Olympics", but it might well be the last to run on a timetable dictated by television schedules rather than spectator demand.
奥运直播吸引了世界各地人们的观看，可是现在他们都是有备而来的。“第二屏幕”，即电脑，让人们互相分享信息，并且补充了“第一屏幕”的不足之处。2012年的伦敦奥运会，实际上是一场“社会媒体奥运会”。在这场比赛中，由电视台主导播什么节目，是赢不了由观众决定看什么节目的。
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