IOC goes for social gold with improved Olympics hub and official Instagram, Tumblr accounts

Not content to leave the social media-ization of this summer’s Olympic Games in London to partners, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has improved its social portal to give fans more access to athletes and is actively setting up accounts across all major social properties.

Enhanced Thursday, the Olympic Athletes’ Hubs is a destination site where the IOC hopes fans will go to keep up with their favorite athletes.

Fans can sign in with Facebook or Twitter and use the hub to see past and present Olympians’ aggregated social updates from Facebook and Twitter in one place. Thanks to the platform’s connection to those social networks, people can also leave comments and “likes”, and tweet or retweet from the hub.

The hub now also allows fans to pose questions, via Twitter, to one featured Olympian each day before and during the Games. The hub will soon feature an Olympic Challenge game, integrated with Facebook, that will task fans to predict the outcomes of sporting events.

The IOC has created an @olympics account on the popular photo-sharing app Instagram to keep mobile followers in the know. The committee also has a G+ page and is preparing the release of several official Olympic Tumblr blogs, including one dedicated to photos and commentary of Olympic fashion. The hub will also feature integrations with these platforms.

Foursquare hasn’t been left out of the mix. The IOC is using the location-based social network to incentivize check-ins with badges and rewards.

[via TechCrunch]