Using the Burst application, Olympic athletes are showing behind-the-scenes action as they compete for Olympic medals.
Despite the success and high level of competition among its athletes, the 2012 Olympic games will be known for the way in which NBC and the Olympic governing body controlled access to live events. Rather than embrace the benefits of a digitally-connected world, they fought against the modern world under the banner of media rights. Time-delayed broadcast is a method for an era that did not include social media, streaming video, and a collective willingness to engage with online content.
One tech company, Boston-based Burst, has found a way to work within restrictive Olympic guidelines and still provide access to some of the athletes enjoying London’s hospitality.
Burst is a private network for sharing videos and pictures with small groups of friends and family. To celebrate the spectacle of the Olympic games, Burst arranged for three participating athletes to provide a glimpse of their experience in the Olympic village as they prepared for time on the global stage. Olympic athletes Donn Cabral (track), Dagmara Wozniak and Tim Morehouse (fencing) are using Burst while in London to show behind-the-scenes action as they compete for medals.
“The core for us is private families, but the tool can be used in other ways,” says Paul Levy, COO of Burst.
Originally designed to support youth sports, Burst launched earlier this summer with a mission to lower the barriers to sharing personal content by raising the focus on privacy and control. The company points to a recent independent study of 400 consumers which found 52 percent consider open sites a barrier to posting videos or photos. Instead of broadcasting to everyone, the service provides a means for parents to share precious personal moments in their lives, from baby’s first steps to a double in a Little League game. Only members of their inner circles who would be deeply interested in watching those videos are able to do so.
“We all have kids,” says Levy of his Burst co-founders. “We had our smartphone to take photos and videos, but it is so darn hard to share those selectively with people who care and not my 482 friends on Facebook who maybe don’t care so much about my son’s double in little league. To a few people — my parents in the Boston area, my in-laws in Florida — that’s a meaningful moment.”
“I’ve got a group set up for the Westport Wreckers, my son’s football team,” Levy continues, “which has got 30 parents in there. For my daughter’s softball team, I’ve got 20 parents in that one. When I’m at the game capturing videos, I just instantly Burst it to them, and before they get to the car, they’ve got a curated highlight reel, those ten moments in the game of their daughters and sons they will have forever.”
While there is a free smartphone application and an integrated website to help members manage, distribute and archive memories captured digitally, you don’t have to be a Burst user to receive videos from someone else. The notifications are handled through email, using that platform as a form of verification that the links are being viewed by the desired people. The human-powered nature of curation prevents many of the problems with questionable content that arise in public platforms. Groups can be created to grant access to specific sets of videos. If so inclined, Burst videos can also be shared to Facebook.
“Facebook’s brand isn’t about private select sharing,” explains Levy. “That is a place to be public and out there. Generally the people you are Bursting to are your small close-knit groups, not people you don’t know or trust.”
Burst is evolving. The company plans to develop integrated printing capabilities that allow members to publish a physical form of their media, and Burst will be releasing a new feature this month called “Bubbles” to encourage spontaneous event-based contributions from people nearby. “At the end of the two hours, the bubble bursts and everyone gets access to the content that was created. It’s a nice way to get participation from the community,” says Levy.
The Olympic Bursts are a new way the company is exploring the value of semi-public content. An athlete like Tim Morehouse — who attended nearby Brandeis University — can use the service for VIP access, with exclusive videos that aren’t meant to be distributed widely. It offers fans a different kind of celebrity engagement, one that can just as easily be leveraged for charitable fundraising as personal brand.
By now, the athletic competition for the three Olympic Bursters has ended. Cabral finished 8th in the steeplechase earlier this week. Wozniak made her first Olympic appearance as an athlete (she was an alternate in 2008), losing a close quarter-final match with eventual silver-medalist Sofya Velikaya of Russia. Like Wozniak, Morehouse is a fencer who lost to the eventual silver-medalist. These athletes are still soaking in the Olympic experience, however, as they inch closer to closing ceremonies on August 12.
Cabral will remain in London until August 13 and already has his eye on 2016 game in Rio. Morehouse — who has a strong presence on Twitter and other channels as well — is filling his free time overseas with fencing lessons, talks at local schools, explaining his sport to Elmo, defending his teammates from media attacks, and enjoying some sightseeing with his fiance. Moorehouse also has a book about how he fell in love with swordfighting.
“It’s more engaging to receive video content from that person as opposed to just getting an email,” says Levy.
