FYI: @IOC Is Not the International Olympic Committee

The Open Institute of Catalonia is a university in the northeasternmost region of Spain. It focuses on virtual learning, and bills itself as a "university of the future": a "university that exists on the web, that grows, interacts and shares knowledge freely for the benefit of society as a whole." One sign of the school's web-savvy: It got itself a coveted three-character handle for the Twitter feed it runs in the Catalan dialect. That handle? @Ioc.

The school might be regretting its snappy handle choice right about now, though. Because IOC, of course, is also the acronym of another body: the International Olympic Committee. And the International Olympic Committee, as it tends to do every two years or so, has been finding itself the recipient of some indignation from people who disapprove — of the Olympics' politics, of the Olympics' venue, of the Olympics' venue's bathroom situation. These people are angry. They take to Twitter to express that anger. And they assume, fairly, that the IOC's handle is ... @ioc Read more...