The anticipation was extraordinary — the London 2012 Olympic Games were going to the be the first truly “social games.” Were they?
Now that some time has passed since the closing ceremonies, the media is weighing in on who “won” the social media game, not just among major brands, but among the athletes too. And when we say “social media,” we’re not just talking about Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Remember, unlike in Games past, now there are also Google+, Pinterest, and Tumblr too.
First, just to give you a feel for the kind of big numbers we’re talking about here, Ad Age reports that there were 9.66 million tweets about the Olympics during the opening ceremony alone. That compares to just 500,000 tweets during the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games’ opening ceremony. It’s been reported that overall Game-related tweets published during the 16 days of events totaled about 150 million.
Among official Olympic sponsors, McDonald’s had the most tweets, followed by Coca-Cola, and then Visa. You can take a look at an infographic on Mashable that breaks the stats down. The tracking tool, Cheermeter, reported that non-sponsor Nike was the leader amongst sports brand mentions during the London 2012 Olympic Games, topping Adidas, 16,000+ tweets v. 9,000+.
How did the athletes do? Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt didn’t only win on the track, he won in social media too with more than 960,000 mentions during the Games. Bolt was followed by swimmer Michael Phelps and diver Tom Daley.
What do you think will be the next major event talked about in social media?
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The user participation on Twitter during the Olympics was staggering, especially considering that Twitter was down for around 2 hours the day before the opening ceremonies.
In my opinion, I think the next big social media event of 2012 will be the presidential election. We know that President Obama’s campaign placed great emphasis on social media during the 2008 election, and I feel that we’ll see the growth of its use within Mitt Romney’s camp in the upcoming months (if it hasn’t happened already). It’s likely that news outlets will also have many opportunities for social media participation on Election Day.