Olympics 2012: Twitter Users Sent More Than 150 million Summer Games Tweets

LONDON - The Summer Olympics here, dubbed by many the first-ever social media Olympics, drew more than 150 million tweets over its 16 days of competitions, Twitter said in a late Sunday blog post. 


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The most tweeted about athletes were Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps and British diver Tom Daley, while soccer emerged as the top sport for the Twitterverse at the Olympics, the micro blogging firm said.

Bolt's gold medal-winning run in the 200 meters final drew a tweets per minute record of more than 80,000 for any competition, it said.

But the Spice Girls reached a tweet per minute record of more than116,000

 for the closing ceremony Sunday night, Twitter said.

The other big Twitter moments of the Summer Games were Bolt's win in the 100 meter sprint (74,000-plus tweets), Andy Murray's gold medal victory in the men’s tennis singles final (57,000-plus), Jamaica's world record-setting win in the men’s 4x100 meters sprint relay (52,000-plus) and the U.S. basketball team's basketball gold medal win over Spain (41,000-plus).



Twitter also said that beyond Bolt, Phelps and Daley, seven other athletes drew more than 1 million tweets each during the Olympics. U.S. swimmer Ryan Lochte, followed by gymnastics star Gabby Douglas rounded out the top five athletes in this regard.

They were followed by Murray, NBA star Kobe Bryant, Jamaican sprinter Yohan Blake, Malaysian badminton star Lee Chong Wei and LeBron James.



Email: Georg.Szalai@thr.com


Twitter: @georgszalai