Twitter and NBC form 'Olympics hub'

Twitter and NBC are joining forces to highlight noteworthy tweets from across the Olympic games.

A crack team at Twitter HQ in Boulder, Colorado will spend 20 hours per day curating the maelstrom of tweets from Olympic athletes, their entourages, fans and NBC staff to form a single 'Olympics hub' page.

According to NBC, there is no money involved in the partnership. Instead, it will be pointing viewers to Twitter, and Twitter will be pointing users to NBC's TV coverage of the games.

It is hoped that the exercise will bring a flurry of fresh sign-ups, with Chloe Sladden, Twitter's VP of media, hailing it as "a way for new users to sample Twitter".

More training for athletes

In the lead up to the games, Twitter has been running sessions with athletes and national sports associations in the hope of getting more of them onto the service and tweeting merrily.

Those high-profile Twitter-users could help the company boost the revenue from ad space it sells in the Olympics hub, helping it to beat the $259.9 million it made from advertising last year.

NBC isn't just working with Twitter – it has already arranged a similar mutually-beneficial partnership with Facebook, and is just one more reason why London 2012 will be remembered as the social Olympics.

Via Wall Street Journal