Twitter and the Olympic effect

So the Olympics are at their midway point and as well as some exciting results there have been one or two interesting effects outside of the arenas.

There are plenty of official tweets to follow too including some excellent camera angle shots

There are plenty of official tweets to follow too including some excellent camera angle shots

The Games have been explosive for Twitter. Tweet figures have rocketed and the number of followers for individual sportsmen and women has soared. So it’s no surprise that yesterday’s historic gold medal win in the men’s time trial created a bit of Twitter history.

Bradley Wiggins’ win in the the men’s cycling time trial saw his Twitter following jump by a massive 17% in just 24 hours – and 27% over the week so far. The gold medal win also resulted in a peak of 237,524 tweets on the time trial conversation.

According to Media Week that’s more tweets than during the England and Italy Euro 2012 penalty shootout in June.

Other peaks have included Michael Phelps’ win in the 4×200 freestyle relay on 31 July. During the opening ceremony the biggest spike in conversation occurred when Rowan Atkinson appeared in a homage to the Olympians of Chariots of Fire, according to Twitter’s blog.

Athletes are also making the most of the social network to tweet their fellow athletes with plenty of messages of support and congratulations. Even US President @BarackObama went online to say, “Congrats to Michael Phelps for breaking the all-time Olympic medal record. You’ve made your country proud. -bo”.

British PM David Cameron’s been getting on-board too by tweeting words of congratulations to Team GB, “I couldn’t be more delighted that Helen Glover and Heather Stanning have won the #1stgold medal for Team GB. Here’s to many more”.

We’re sure that record stats will keep on coming for Twitter, especially with the track cycling and athletics still to come.

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