150 Million Tweets About The Olympics Says Twitter

(Newsroom America) -- Twitter saw more than 150 million Tweets about the Olympics over the past 16 days. Let’s take a look at some of the big trends within that massive conversation, with the biggest tweeting moments happening during the heat of competition.

The biggest moments of competition, as measured by Tweets per minute, were:

-Usain Bolt (@UsainBolt) of Jamaica wins gold in the 200m sprint: 80,000+ TPM -Bolt wins gold in the 100m sprint: 74,000+ TPM

-Andy Murray (@andy_murray) of Great Britain wins gold in the men’s tennis singles: 57,000+ TPM

-Jamaica wins gold and sets the world record in the men’s 4x100 relay: 52,000+ TPM

-Team USA beats Spain to win gold in men’s basketball: 41,000+ TPM

The biggest tweeting moments that came during the heat of competition (not at a medal-winning conclusion) included Kobe Bryant’s dunk towards the end of the USA-Spain basketball game, and Hope Solo’s (@HopeSolo) land-diving save in the women’s USA-Japan soccer match.

In addition to inspiring the biggest conversation spike with his 200m win, Usain Bolt also took home the record for being the most discussed athlete of the Games. But he had company — nine other Olympians garnered more than 1 million Tweets each:

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)

And which sports saw the most Twitter conversation? Whether you know it best as football, fútbol, soccer, or サッカー, the action on the pitch drove well over 5 million Tweets.

Other popular sports were the swimming events, the track & field (athletics) events, gymnastics, and volleyball.

The opening and closing ceremonies both drove an incredible volume of Twitter conversation, and experienced their own giant spikes in Tweets per minute.

The Closing Ceremonies didn’t disappoint — with performances by The Who, George Michael and so many more. But it was the Spice Girls who stole the night, inspiring more than 116,000 Tweets per minute.