Twitter takes social spotlight at London Olympics

03.08.2012
Twitter is basking in the Olympic spotlight, with athletes tweeting about the games and fans around the world offering their support on the social network.

Social networks from Facebook to Google+ are seeing numerous users posting comments -- and complaints -- about the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, but Twitter is believed by many observers to be seeing the most traffic. In fact, some observers say the games may become known as the Twitter Olympics.

"Twitter is a broadcast medium so it's really best for these kinds of news events," said Ezra Gottheil, an analyst at Technology Business Research. "If you were on a team at school, you would probably share commentary over Facebook. But with the Olympics, it's like the entire world is watching the same thing at the same time, and that's a Twitter thing, not a Facebook or Google+ thing."

Since Twitter is all about sharing common experiences, users have gone to the micro-blogging site in droves to cheer the victories of their Olympic athletes and mourn their losses.

Through earlier today, the counted 383,174 tweets about swimming and 335,881 tweets about gymnastics since the games began about a week ago.

And when U.S. swimmer , who has 210,644 Twitter followers, won a gold medal in the 100-meter backstroke earlier this week, tweets about her were hitting Twitter at a rate of 12,702 per minute.