The 2012 London games are now a memory.
Many pundits were calling the XXX Olympiad the “Social Olympics,” but just how much of an impact did the games really make on social media platforms? A couple of blog posts from recent days took a look.
First, Twitter’s Manager of Editorial Programming, Andrew Fitzgerald, wrote a post summarizing the most discussed athletes on Twitter during the games:
1. Usain Bolt (@UsainBolt)
2. Michael Phelps (@MichaelPhelps)
3. Tom Daley (@TomDaley1994)
4. Ryan Lochte (@ryanlochte)
5. Gabby Douglas (@gabrielledoug)
6. Andy Murray (@andy_murray)
7. Kobe Bryant (#GetKobeOnTwitter)
8. Yohan Blake (@YohanBlake)
9. Lee Chong Wei (@Lee_C_Wei)
10. LeBron James (@KingJames)
And, calculated in Tweets-per-minute, here were the five biggest moments of the games:
1. Usain Bolt (@UsainBolt) of Jamaica wins gold in the 200m sprint: 80,000+ TPM
2. Bolt wins gold in the 100m sprint: 74,000+ TPM
3. Andy Murray (@andy_murray) of Great Britain wins gold in the men’s tennis singles: 57,000+ TPM
4. Jamaica wins gold and sets the world record in the men’s 4×100 relay: 52,000+ TPM
5. Team USA beats Spain to win gold in men’s basketball: 41,000+ TPM
Finally, Fitzgerald calculated that The Spice Girls took the Closing Ceremony honors, generating 116,000 tweets-per-minute.
Additionally, Bluefin labs posted a great infographic on the impact of social TV and the games that confirmed Twitter’s analysis (and rolled in some Facebook stats).
Lastly, our own Robert Bianco wrote about some lessons TV learned in London that should be applied to the next games in Rio.
