Red Bull, Verizon Tweets Run Afoul of Olympics Rules

Neither Red Bull nor Verizon Communications (VZ) are Olympic sponsors, but both have posted items about the Vancouver Games on Twitter and Facebook.

That is a violation of Olympics rules, which say advertisers that don’t pay the tens of millions of dollars an official sponsorship costs may not associate themselves with the Games or the athletes during the events or the weeks surrounding them.

“RT @henryyamamoto: Here’s an idea for next Winter Olympics: Get @RedBull to produce it instead of some ‘committee’ or NBC Sports #olympics,” Red Bull posted to Twitter last Wednesday, retweeting the post of another Twitterer.

“We’re rooting for you @LindseyVonn @Shaun_White @GregBretzz and @Drahlves in the 2010 Winter #Olympics!” Red Bull posted the previous week, cheering on the U.S. ski and snowboard athletes it endorses.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Must-Reads from other Websites

Panos Mourdoukoutas

Why Apple Should Buy China’s Xiaomi

Paul Graham

What I Didn’t Say

Benjamin Bratton

We Need to Talk About TED

Mat Honan

I, Glasshole: My Year With Google Glass

Chris Ware

All Together Now

Corey S. Powell and Laurie Gwen Shapiro

The Sculpture on the Moon

About Voices

Along with original content and posts from across the Dow Jones network, this section of AllThingsD includes Must-Reads From Other Websites — pieces we’ve read, discussions we’ve followed, stuff we like. Six posts from external sites are included here each weekday, but we only run the headlines. We link to the original sites for the rest. These posts are explicitly labeled, so it’s clear that the content comes from other websites, and for clarity’s sake, all outside posts run against a pink background.

We also solicit original full-length posts and accept some unsolicited submissions.

Read more »