The London 2012 Olympic Games have come and gone, with this being the most successful Olympics for Team South Africa since readmission in 1992. The Games have also led to Twitter records being posted, since according to the microblogging site, more than 150 million tweets about the Olympics were posted over the 16 day competition.

Top events in terms of tweets per minute

The biggest moment of competition, as measured in terms of tweets per minute (TPM) was Usain Bolt (@UsainBolt) of Jamaica winning gold in the 200 m sprint. Twitter users posted 80 000+ TPM during this event.

Following on Bolt’s golden heels in the 200 m was his equally impressive showing in the 100 m, in which he also took home gold and inspired more than 74 000 TPM to be logged on the social networking site.

Britain’s own fan favourite Andy Murray (@andy_murray) smashed his way to gold in the men’s tennis singles, leading to a TPM ace tally of over 57 000 tweets per minute.

Jamaica’s third appearance in the top 5 was the 4x100 m men’s relay team who won gold in a world record time (36.84 seconds), drumming up a copious amount of Twitter support with more than 52 000 TPM being posted.

Completing the top 5 events was Team USA who bested Spain to win gold and produce a Twitter TPM slam dunk, as over 41 000 TPMs were logged during the men’s basketball final.

Bolt sparks Twitter conversation

Besides inspiring the biggest Twitter conversation spike with his 200 m win, Usain Bolt also managed to net the record for being the most discussed Olympic athlete of the Games, according to Twitter. Bolt along with nine other Olympians produced tweet counts of more than one million each, with the top ten being:

1. Usain Bolt (@UsainBolt)
2. Michael Phelps (@MichaelPhelps)
3. Tom Daley (@TomDaley1994)
4. Ryan Lochte (@ryanlochte)
5. Gabby Douglas (@gabrielledoug)
6. Andy Murray (@andy_murray)
7. Kobe Bryant (#GetKobeOnTwitter)
8. Yohan Blake (@YohanBlake)
9. Lee Chong Wei (@Lee_C_Wei)
10. LeBron James (@KingJames)

In addition, the popular social networking site also highlighted tweets that shed light on the historic accomplishment of some of the athletes including the following one by Oscar Pistorius (@OscarPistorius):