2012 London Olympics Generated 150 Million Tweets
London, England – The 2012 London Olympics were a smash hit for social network Twitter. According to a recent report, the games generated thousands of tweets per minute for a total of more than 150 million postings.
The games, which lasted 16 days, saw the most Twitter activity when Usain Bolt was competing. The world’s fastest man competed in the 200m and 100m races, and, during the former, Twitter experienced 80,000 tweets per minutes, while the 200m race was still impressive at 74,000 tweets per minute.
Usain Bolt wasn’t the only athlete to bring in big tweet numbers. Men’s gold medal tennis champ Andy Murray pushed the network to 57,000+ TPM while the Jamaican 4×100 relay team hit 52,000 tweets per minute on the heels of their world record setting race.
As expected, basketball played well in the United States with 41,000+ TPM sent after Team USA defeated Spain for a gold medal win in men’s basketball.
Unfortunately for athletes, they were overshadowed by the Spice Girls performance during closing ceremonies, a performance that netted them 116,000 tweets per minute. Apparently when it comes to being the fastest trending party on Twitter, the Spice Girls outrun Usain Bolt.
When all was said and done 10 athletes each generated 1+ million tweets each:
- Usain Bolt
- Michael Phelps
- Tom Daley
- Ryan Lochte
- Gabby Douglas
- Andy Murray
- Kobe Bryant
- Yohan Blake
- Lee Chong Wei
- LeBron James
When it came to dominating the field, however, it was soccer with its 5+ million tweets that showed the world why it’s the most popular sport.
Are you surprised by Twitter’s massive Olympics reach?
