"Xomo not only delivered a great product to us but it was as close to Ôturn keyÕ as you could possibly get."
Graeme Menzies, Director, Online Communications
Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games
" ... It is our belief that this was one of the most effective and thorough sport mobile spectator guides ever developed and the feedback received was nothing short of spectacular. We believe this is just the beginning of an enhanced mobile presence for events that will benefit the mobile consumer."
Loring Phinney
Vice President, Corporate & Olympic Marketing
Bell Canada
"... a must-have for sports fans!"
ReadWriteWeb
"The official spectator guide is head and shoulders above ... everything on it seems to run incredibly smoothly and snappily."
The Vancouver Sun
"It's a fully comprehensive directory for sporting events, cultural events, Games schedules, venues, and maps all rolled into one."
Miss 604
"It's easy to use and within seconds you can figure out everything you need to know to follow the Winter Olympics."
The Huffington Post
Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games
Xomo delivered the Official 2010 Olympic Games Mobile Spectator Guide with unmatched performance and scalability to more than 1 million users in 56 countries.
- Multiple Devices
- Multiple Languages
- Massive Audience
- Scalable Infrastructure
- #1 App in Multiple Countries
- 1,000,000+ Active Users
- 40,000 Ratings (Avg. 4/5/5)
- 1,000+ Reviews
Keeping Fans Up-to-Date Around the World
Known as 2010Guide, the free Mobile Spectator Guide is a digital schedule of all events at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games. By automatically adjusting to the local timezone, smartphone users in Vancouver and around the world could keep track of their favourite sports and view results in real-time.
Unpredictable weather resulted in the rescheduling of multiple events. Xomo's product made it simple for the Vancouver Organizing Committee to push these updates to users of the digital schedule - which was kept up to date throughout the Games.
The app even works without a data connection - a great feature for the many international visitors who did not have access to the internet on their smartphone.
Scaling to an Olympic-sized Audience
Xomo's Event Guide product was built to accommodate millions of active users, thousands of events and hundreds of venues as well as meeting the the intense security requirements of a global event like the Olympic Games. It had to be perfect. Xomo relied on the world's leading web content delivery infrastructure at Akamai to ensure users would always be able to download the latest schedule. During peak load in the first days of the Games, the app was being downloaded twice every second and Xomo's app performed flawlessly.
Multiple Devices & Languages
The 2010Guide app works on the official mobile device of the Games, the Samsung Omnia II, and a range of other popular smartphones. The app is also available in English and French, the official languages of both Canada and the IOC.
Navigating the Games
The app is location-aware, helping visitors navigate more than 2,000 sport and cultural events at 150 venues during the Games. The app pinpointed a user's location using GPS and could tell them 'What's On Now' close to their location.
It also provides dynamic maps to venues and venue location diagrams, as well as information to help visitors navigate transit systems and links to turn-by-turn directions.
Planning Your Olympic Experience
With so many events at the Olympic Games, the app helped ensure people never missed the events that were most important to them. Users could build their own personalized itinerary by adding events to their Favorites list. They could even add an entire category of events.
Fans could filter the schedule by sport events, cultural events or location, and use the keyword search to find events of interest to them. The app included an event listing by category, allowing users to drill down to find specific events.
Cultural Events and Ticket Sales
In addition to sports, the app listed all official ceremonies and cultural events, including all Cultural Olympiad events and festivities at official Celebration Sites. Fans could even purchase tickets to concerts and other cultural events through an embedded web page.
Give Your App a Shake
On some devices the app included an Easter Egg, a hidden feature that activated when people shook the app and played one of 12 cute videos of the popular Olympic mascots. The response was incredible. Thousands of feedback emails and twitter posts referenced the mascot videos adding significantly to the viral distribution of the app worldwide.
Headlines and Social Media
The 2010Guide also included headlines and medal counts that were updated in real-time. The app featured popular Twitter streams from contributors writing about the Games.
Integrated Branding and Location-based Sponsor Activations
As the presenting sponsor for the Mobile Spectator Guide and the exclusive Telecommunications Partner of the Games, Bell wanted to associate their brand with this innovative mobile application. In addition to branding on the initial splash screen, Bell's logo was integrated into the header of the app alternating with the Olympic rings.
Xomo also delivered a special time and location-based video message for people who were using the mobile app in Vancouver on the day of the Opening Ceremonies. People near the venue received a special animated video message from the sponsor that thanked them for being there for such a special occasion.
