Not sure if you'll be near the TV for Saturday's 2009 Under Armour Baltimore Running Festival? Not to worry, R2integrated (R2i), a Baltimore-based Internet marketing company,has teamed with Corrigan Sports Enterprises (CSE), to present the race online via its new social media platform, R2iSMASH.
R2iSMASH drives interactivity around specific events, campaigns, or initiatives by combining feeds from popular social networking sites into one presentation window. The R2iSMASH site developed for the Baltimore Running Festival will feature live streamed video,Tweets, texts, Flickr and cell phone photos, and blog feeds�all collected simultaneously, yielding a real-time gallery of event content and commentary.
"Unlike most social media tools that push internal messages outward, R2iSMASH technology gathers external messages inward and neatly packages them for exhibition," says Matt Goddard, CEO, R2i. "We've never seen a major metropolitan running festival�or major sporting event for that matter�harness social media in this way, and we're excited to be aligned with CSE to make sports broadcast history."
Some 20,000 runners are expected to participate in the five races that comprise the Under Armour Baltimore Running Festival taking place on October 10. By using R2iSMASH, CSE provides both festival participants and non-participants with a unique way of tracking the event and sharing in the experience�live. Fans, friends, and family of runners competing in the festival can now watch the scene unfold from almost anywhere in the world.
The running festival R2iSMASH site will also include a results button that visitors can click to find runner finish times. Site visitors can also view immediate updates from the official time car in the "Running Commentary" feed where they will be marked with a red bus icon. Festival sponsor logos will be interspersed within the Flickr photo stream as well. When the festival concludes, all images, Tweets, and data captured on the R2iSMASH page will be archived and available for review.
Earlier this year, R2i -- which has had a 24 percent growth in revenue since 2008 -- deployed R2iSMASH sites to cover the Sonia Sotomayor confirmation and the Michael Jackson Tribute. Combined, the two sites aggregated more than 300,000 Tweets and texts feeds, and more than 5,000 photos.
Source: Matt Goddard, R2i
Writer: Walaika Haskins