Will Anyone Actually Watch the Olympics Online?

The 2012 Summer Olympics will be more socially and digitally connected than any before — there’s no question there.

But will sports fans take advantage of the surfeit of streaming video options available this July and August? One recent study predicts online viewing engagement will actually be quite low.

According to research by the sports media group Perform, just 16% of American sports fans plan to watch the action online via PC, and just 7% plan to do so by Internet-enabled mobile device. This despite the fact that NBCOlympics.com will stream every event from every sport as well as every medal ceremony — 3,500 hours all told.

71% of Americans plan to watch the Games on TV the old fashioned way. 23% said they’ll read online via PC, and 7% by mobile device. 27% plan to read article offline, and 12% will follow along via social media.

In Australia, where much of the competition will take place during working hours as well, online viewing forecasts are also low. 10% of Australian respondents to the Perform survey said they’ll watch online via PC, while just 6% said they’ll watch on a mobile device. 73% said they’ll watch on regular television.

Streaming video engagement also looks to be low across the rest of Europe, but China is the Perform study’s one outlier. 70% of respondents there said they’ll watch online via PC, while 35% said they plan to watch on an Internet connected mobile device. 55% of Chinese respondents said they’ll read online via PC — over 15% more than the next highest country, Brazil.

Check out the chart below for the full picture, then let us know in the comments — will you watch any of this year’s Olympics online? Why or why not?

Hey I just met you, and this is crazy, but there is a law in place, so arrest them maybe?

Today I read an article on the Guardian website about ''Twacists'', AKA people being racist on Twitter. They seemed to target well known people and send them hideous tweets. After reading through the comments, I feel that my opinion is somewhat the unpopular one.

The high percent of comments that were outraged that someone would be put in jail for being racist on Twitter is worrying. Some of them stating that England is going downhill, comparing it to '1984', that someday soon we will have no freedom and can't say what we want to. Now, maybe it's just me, but I personally think that if you do something wrong - you deserve to be punished. Let's face it, if racism is suddenly classed as socially acceptable, imagine what else will be. I haven't personally been subject to any racism in my life, does that suddenly mean that I should find it ok? From the awful comments I've read on the issue - from the 'general' public - I think maybe they recon that's the case.

Terrifying. This is what is wrong with England. Those people that think bullying is acceptable, that it's just a joke, that it's just them spouting out their opinion. Don't get me wrong - everyone is entitled to their own opinion, I'm all up for listening to their opinion on music, food, politics, and hobbies. However, a hateful opinion on other human being because of where they are from/what they look like/who they're attracted to? That's just not right. Why do these people deserve to have their life thrown into disarray because some (I'm not going to swear) foolish person thinks they're better than them. I'll tell you now - that's not the case.

I think it's fantastic that the police are clamping down on them, and even more fantastic that these idiots are throwing out their racial nonsense on popular social media sites. Do they not realise it's visual proof against them? Ridiculous.

The internet can be an incredibly dark place for those who are targeted. Can you possibly imagine, getting bombarded with hatred and abuse constantly? Would you wish that on yourself? Of course you wouldn't, so for certain people out there to think it's just fine and dandy to do that, it's pathetic. In addition to this, social media is growing more and more by the day, so if nasty comments get overlooked, this will surely just get worse?

Let's look back to what our mother's would say to us as a child - If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all!

Facebook Rolling Out ‘Trending Videos’

Facebook users have encountered “trending articles” popping up in their news feeds for the past few weeks. This new feature highlights articles that are popular with your friends, ensuring you don’t miss a hot story because it gets pushed down to the bottom of your feed.

Now, Facebook is reportedly doing the same with viral videos.

A new “trending videos” feature is being rolled out to some Facebook users, according to a report from TheNextWeb. Once you’ve got the new feature, it will auto-populate with videos your friends are watching on Facebook’s Open Graph apps.

Facebook has been experimenting with trending articles, giving the feature a less invasive redesign late last month.

However, plenty of Mashable readers found the feature cumbersome and annoying. One, David Holley, called it “obnoxious as hell” because it didn’t seem to actually highlight articles that his friends were reading. How could Facebook do a better job of highlighting popular articles and videos in your news feed? Let us know in the comments.