London 2012 was the socialympics

by Mark Frary

A lot has been made about the 2012 Olympics being the first social Games. It is not strictly true – Facebook was founded in 2004, YouTube in 2005 and Twitter in 2006 – but it is certainly the first Olympics we have experienced since social media reached mainstream acceptance.

Twitter share a few stats about its Olympics after the closing ceremony. It said that there had been 150 million tweets about the Games over 16 days.

Perhaps inevitably, the most tweeted about participant was Usain Bolt. The Twittersphere was tweeting at a rate of 80,000 tweets per minute (TPM) during his retention of the gold medal in the 200 metres, slightly more than were tweeting about his triumph in the 100. Bolt ended up as the most discussed athlete of the Games, ahead of swimmer Michael Phelps and diver Tom Daley or, as he is often known on Twitter particularly to admirers of that toned physique, #nom Daley - nom being slang for good looking.

Andy Murray’s victory in the tennis created the third biggest frenzy of the Games - at 57,000 TPM.

The Games were also a social media success for individual athletes. Young Mr Daley added half a million followers to his Twitter account since the beginning of July, while Jess Ennis added 400,000. Mo Farah doubled his follower count too after his double long-distance golds.

There were also some surprises – football was the most tweeted about sport at the Games, generating more than 5 million tweets, perhaps an indicator of its wide global appeal.

It wasn’t all about sport – the most tweeted about act at the Closing Ceremony was the Spice Girls who generated 116,000TPM as they emerged from five London cabs.

Search volumes at Google also spiked during the Games. Japanese gymnastics gold medallist Kohei Uchimura generated 420% more searches in London than in Beijing four years ago. Indian wrestler Sushil Kumar also drove huge search volumes – up 375% on Beijing.

In the UK, the most searched for athletes were Usain Bolt, Jessica Ennis, Michael Phelps, Victoria Pendleton and Andy Murray.

YouTube was powering the live streaming of events for NBC in the US and the IOC. In total, more than 20 million hours of video was streamed during the Games for NBC and tens of millions of streams on the IOC channel. Interestingly, 44% of those streaming the Games did so using a mobile device, says YouTube. More than half of those viewing were watching simultaneously on TV and online.

These statistics really bring home how London 2012 really was the Socialympics. But how did brands fare? Official Olympic sponsor Visa’s YouTube channel was one of the most popular – its adverts and athlete training videos generating more than 47 million views during the Games.However, one of the most talked about subjects on Twitter were the guerrilla-marketed Beats headphones being sported by many athletes. Social media has started to make the official sponsorship system look very creaky indeed.