The Olympics are right around the corner! I'll admit that I'm one of those people who stops pretty much everything to watch the Olympics. Having been raised in Canada, I have a special place in my heart for the winter Olympics too. So I warn you now, I will probably talk about the Olympics quite a bit on my social media channels during their run.

But this got me thinking more about the Olympics and social media. The London Olympics in 2012 were the first "real" social media involved Olympics. And while some of it went smoothly, there were a lot of issues with this new media as well.

You probably remember issues with NBC live tweeting events and results. The problem was that they didn't broadcast the actual events until more convenient times for ratings and US schedules. A lot of people complained publicly, on Twitter, and elsewhere about this but no real resolution ever occurred. So I'm curious to see how they handle this issue this year. Or if they even handle it differently at all.

One change this year is that NBC has organized a deal allowing them to live stream Olympic coverage on Facebook. While NBC and Facebook did the same thing for the London games, this year's coverage and partnership has been broadly expanded. I will be interested to see how and if this benefits Facebook. As the only social media platform offering this type of coverage, they should see increased time spent on Facebook and increased conversations, both real-time and otherwise, on their site.

According to the IOC, "The IOC actively encourages and supports athletes and other accredited persons at the Olympic Games to take part in social media and to post, blog and tweet their experiences. Such activity must respect the Olympic Charter..." The IOC outlines strict rules including that blog posts and social media posts must be written in first-person context and that only photos may be shared. No video or audio content can be shared by participants or other accredited persons. There are strict guidelines for those staying in the Olympic Villages. There are also strict guidelines, basically saying people can't use the IOC symbol on their blogs or posts.

As mentioned in those guidelines, there has been a lot of talk about what journalists can use and post during these Olympics. Some reports indicated that journalists wouldn't be allowed to use any mobile devices as journalistic devices. There was some clarification offered later, however, which stated that journalists could indeed use their mobile devices and share photos from the Olympics but that they could not share videos of any sort, including Vine and Instagram videos. The premise is that any video content violates the Olympic games' broadcast rights. I get it - from their perspective. They have sponsors and contracts that need to be protected. But in a modern world where everything is shared online, I think this will be an issue to be resolved for future Olympic events.

It should also be noted, as far as I can tell, that this rule also applies to Games' participants. Knowing that most of these athletes have strong social media presences, and will only dramatically increase their followers as they compete, it seems hard to imagine restricting their level of social media posting so strictly.

Of course, there is also the other popular topic around these Olympic games which is the issue of security. As we all know social media can be used to better protect the public as a rapid sharing of information but it could also provide insight or information to those wishing to cause harm around the Games. Again, it will be a time-will-tell situation, I think, to see how officials and visitors use social media in regards to public safety.

I really expect this year's Olympics and social media to set new precedents for how future Games handle social media. I also expect there to be a lot of confusion and that a lot of people will test the limits that they've been given with respect to social media at the Olympics.

But more importantly, I'm really looking forward to all the posts across social media documenting the Games and everything they have to offer!