The BBC’s Bejing Olympics coverage has been embracing new technologies including SMS. The Live Olympics page is not only embedding the BBC’s iPlayer allowing you to watch the sport of your choice but there is a Live Text Commentary alongside it. Leveraging the latest Web 2.0 technologies, the commentary text updates itself without needing the user to reload the webpage using Ajax.
The comments appearing on the web page are short snippets of Olympics news but also includes feedback to customer messages sent in via an SMS Shortcode they have set up. The style of short posts written in a relaxed and often fun tone have been encouraging customers to text in with their thoughts and discussion points.
In one post this lunchtime, Ben Dirs who is writing on the page today said:
“1415: Lots of people moaning about the medals table, mainly because Germany are shown above GB despite having exactly the same medal tally. Seriously, I worry about you lot sometimes, haven’t you got some hoovering to do?”
This two-way communication with SMS being used as a way to collect direct feedback and the results being integrated live via a web page is a great example of how SMS can help you build Web 2.0 community style experiences.
