Phelps exchanged tweets with , who tweeted, "Congrats to Michael Phelps for breaking the all-time Olympic medal record. You've made your country proud. - bo" Phelps replied, "Thank you Mr. President!! It's an honor representing the USA."

Olympic athletes also are using Twitter to stay connected with each other, while some pretty famous names have used the site to reach out to their favorite athletes.

It hasn't been all gold medals for Twitter.

The a day before the start of the Olympics and then came under a lot of fire for temporarily suspending a journalist's Twitter account for criticizing NBC's Olympic coverage and providing his followers with the corporate email address of an NBC executive.

Sharon Gaudin covers the Internet and Web 2.0, emerging technologies, and desktop and laptop chips for Computerworld. Follow Sharon on Twitter at , or subscribe to . Her e-mail address is .