Sprint king Usain Bolt's wins inspired record-breaking tweets per minute, truly making the Olympics the first real 'social media Games'
Jamaican sprint king Usain Bolt dominated Twitter during the Olympics, the social networking site has revealed, with his gold in the 200 metres inspiring a staggering 80,000 tweets per minute.
He followed it up with more than 74,000 messages posted every minute for his 100-metre triumph, the second most-tweeted event of London 2012, the website said after the Games closed late Sunday. The figures justified the organisers’ boast that London was the first real “social media Games”.
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“In addition to inspiring the biggest conversation spike with his 200m win, Usain Bolt also took home the record for being the most discussed athlete of the Games,” it added.
“But he had company – nine other Olympians garnered more than 1 million Tweets each.” These included US swimmers Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte, British diver Tom Daley, and Malaysian badminton player Lee Chong Wei.
The Spice Girls’ performance in London’s closing extravaganza inspiring more than 116,000 tweets a minute. Jamaica’s world record-smashing win in the men’s 4x100 relay – the event which gave Bolt his third gold of the Games – was hailed by more than 52,000 tweets each minute.u00a0