All Things Sochi

Found another great article about the Sochi Olympics to share today. Everyone's gotta be all informed and ready for tonight's opening ceremonies!!!

I'll keep this brief... Feel free to check out the linked article above for more information.

Sochi (pronounced So-chee) is located on the Black Sea. It has a population of around 400,000 and stretches 90 miles along the Black Sea, making it the second longest city in the world behind only Mexico City.

The mountains you see in the picture above are the beautiful Caucasus Mountains. Sochi also hosts pebble and sand beaches, along with Stalinist architecture. Its been said that Sochi was Joseph Stalin's favorite "Dacha", or seasonal/summer home area. In fact, Sochi is known as the Russian Riviera.

Sochi is a resort town with subtropical temperatures, making it the warmest city to host an Olympic Winter Games (average temperatures around 53 Farenheit).

Sochi is a predominantly Christian city, though approximately 5% of its inhabitants are Muslim.

In terms of Olympic preparation, Sochi was chosen to host this years games back in 2007. More than 200 miles of roads and bridges were built along with over 125 miles of railroads. 690,000 people were at work to make this happen.

Sochi is 9 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time.

The conversation rate for currency: $1USD = about 35 Russian rubles.

Final fun fact - the Sochi mayor has claimed that there are no gays whatsoever in Sochi. "They are not accepted."

Last but not least, GO TEAM USA!

Sochi Olympics -- Meet Team USA!

Found this awesome site this morning and thought I should share with y'all. The Boston Globe created an article profiling all 230 American athletes participating in the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Hopefully this year we can improve on our 2010 record setting performance that included 37 total medals (9 gold). Anyways, check out the site where you can filter athletes by sport, home state, medals won, and gender!

Update on the MLS

Some interesting developments this week with regards to MLS Soccer. I keep close tabs on the MLS and its accomplishments, as a huge soccer fan interested in how this industry will expand. Well this week the news includes Beckham bringing a team to Miami, salary cap projections, and the NYCFC Badge.

New York Times reported yesterday that Beckham is back, as an Owner of a new club. The Miami based team will become the 22nd club in the MLS (hopefully with a team in Atlanta to follow!). Don Garber, commissioner of the MLS, did however announce that the team would not be likely to play until the 2016 season. It is obvious that they will need a new stadium also. I found it interesting that in 2007 when Beckham signed as a player, a clause was included allowing him future purchase of a club for the under market value price of $25 million. As it looks today, as soon as a stadium deal is set up, the team will be announced. However, NYCFC (the league's 20th club) paid a reported $100 million and does not even have a temporary stadium for their inaugural 2015 season. Also debuting in the 2015 season is the league's 21st club, Orlando City. Hopefully this surge in Southeastern clubs will draw Falcons owner Arthur Blank to opening a club here in Atlanta! Interesting stuff here, can't wait to see how it develops.

Another interesting article I found today dealt with the salary cap situation in the MLS. It's quite complicated to read, but very interesting if you're into soccer/wages in the MLS. It basically talks about how, if the MLS want to be a top club by 2022, the salary cap will be the number one issue that needs to be addressed. Currently Clint Dempsey's salary is at $8 million, the highest in the MLS, compared to the $36k minimum salary. Meaning Dempsey's salary can pay for around 222 minimum salary players. The article provides more breakdown of salaries for starters, substitutes, and reserve players which was interesting to read about. Also discussed is the money that the MLS makes and where it comes from. Included in this article is information regarding the MLS relationship to SUM (Soccer United Marketing), who were set up in 2002 to manage the marketing and rights to soccer in the United States. SUM currently manages the MLS, USSF and even the Mexican National teams appearances in America. Wow. So in turn, this means that the Mexican international squad is actually helping the MLS.

The final article for today I found on Bleacher Report. The new, New York squad named NYCFC (co-owned by the New York Yankees and Manchester City) thought that some community interaction could be advantageous for creating a new team badge. Remember people, social media does not always play nicely. Here's an example of a user created badge, head to the website linked above to check out the rest.

Google's $3,200,000,000 Purchase

I had to include the entire number in the title just to show how significant this is. 3.2 BILLION dollar purchase of Nest! (Read more from TheVerge.com) This is on top of other recent purchases including Calico, Boston Dynamics, and Motorola. Google has seemingly become a giant in nearly every industry these days, and must be planning big things for the future. Also think -- driverless cars and robotics are industries they have planted stakes in recently.

As we all know, Google is all about data. Here's an example of the data Nest will now be providing to Google. Energy reports. Month to month, hours used, differences caused by temperature change, tips, interesting facts, and much much more.

 This leads to the idea that Google is closing the gap on creating "Smart Homes". Quite an exciting thought. With Google's networks and connections, it would be great if they could use Nest's products to dramatically decrease America (and the Worlds) energy usage. It's about time super companies begin sustainability practices.

For those of you who don't know much about Nest, they are company formed in 2011 by Tony Fadell and Matt Rogers, specializing in thermostats and smoke alarms. I've included images of their sleek and intelligent products with this post. Their products have raving reviews and are consistently best sellers. Furthermore, Google CEO Larry Page describes the team these men have created as "tremendous". Fadell, Philips Electronics developer and designer of the iPod, will continue to lead Nest separately from Google's operations. The deal with Google is set to close in the coming months.

Update on Cristiano Ronaldo

He's at it again!

If you look back my post from November, you'll see some information about soccer-stud Cristiano Ronaldo trying to market his name into the business world. His previous attempt entailed men's underwear, but now he's started his own social network! (Read more at Mirror Online).

Titled Viva Ronaldo, the site offers photos, games, community interaction, and opportunities to meet and play soccer with Ronaldo himself. The website offers connections to his Twitter and Facebook pages, so you can easily post/tweet to him, and the network is even available for download in the App Store. (Get it HERE)

It will be interesting to see an athlete take a "fansite" to the next level by creating a social network revolved around himself. Even more interesting to see if the network succeeds. For this international superstar, however, it may not be too difficult as he is the most followed athlete on Twitter, with 23,614,324 followers. That's a little more than twice what LeBron accounts for!

Winning the 2014 Ballon d'Or (given annually to the best individual soccer player in the world) may also help this ever growing superstar's popularity and reach extend just a little bit further. The 28 year old beat out Messi and Ribery to take home the prestigious award. Here he is, pictured emotionally holding the award.

Reddit - The Front Page of the Internet?

Many of you probably know of the popular website known as Reddit. The name comes from combining the words Read and It, who would've known? Myself being a Redditor, I can tell you first hand that the clever name is only the beginning of the clever and interesting things you can find on this domain. Honestly, it's the type of site you can get lost on, being that there are so many random and intriguing "sub-Reddits". For any of your interests (or pretty much anything you can think of), there is probably a sub-Reddit with humorous content and a dedicated community of Redditors interacting on the page. In turn, Reddit has also become a viable social media source of information as users crowd source news, and quickly seek out the proof that deems the news legitimate.

However, the Business Insider published a report this morning pertaining to Reddit's traffic stats from 2013. Author Jim Edwards states that although Reddit saw an 83% increase in traffic in 2013 (up to 731 million unique visitors), the site has dwindled to a much smaller amount of social media sharing traffic. Shareaholic found that Reddit's share of information given to publishers dropped around 36%.

This growth in overall traffic, but decline in shared information can only mean one thing - that Reddit has begun to horde its own information. Publishers are now beginning to "link in" to information from Reddit, whereas Redditors used to do a lot of "linking out" to information found elsewhere online.

For charts, graphs, and more information visit the Shareaholic link posted above. And furthermore, if you are interested, I invite all of you to go check out Reddit for yourselves!

Social Media Greatest Influencers

First of all, I hope everyone had a safe and enjoyable New Year's Eve! I'm excited for what 2014 may bring us!

The other day I was browsing my Twitter feed when I stumbled across an article from WSBTV about Georgia's 2013 social media influencers. It's definitely interesting to see which celebrities/Atlanta locals are piling up the most followers, or the creating the most popular content. 

In case you're too lazy to follow the link and see for yourself, the list goes as follows:

1. Jennifer Brett (@AJCBuzz)

2. Paste Magazine (@PasteMagazine)

3. Everything Georgia (@GAFollowers) -- My personal favorite.

4. Clark Howard (@ClarkHoward)

5. Atlanta Hawks (@ATLHawks)

6. Jovita Moore (@JovitaMoore)

7. Atlanta Events (@ATL_Events)

8. Kim Severson (@KimSeverson)

9. Kasim Reed (@KasimReed)

10. 2 Chainz (@2Chainz)

So if you're from Georgia and enjoy social media, get on your Facebook or Twitter and give these people a follow. You'll be amazed with the kind of information and discussions they create. 

PS. Congrats Jennifer! Keep it up! (This is her Twitter avatar, go follow her!)