There were 9.6 Million Tweets during the London 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony (WSJ.com). They were mainly comments from those watching the show unfolding on television and from those watching from the bleachers at the Olympic Stadium. Tweets were both positive and negative but on a whole they represented an engaged audience. In this way, Twitter has set the record for the first “social” Olympics. To give perspective to this, during the Beijing Olympics there were a respectable few million Twitter users and today there are over 140 million active Twitter users. That growth is felt in every journalistic breath spoken or written over the London Olympics. It is the Olympic audience and the athletes themselves who, over the course of the first few days of the games, have led media coverage through their use of Twitter.
Trending Twitter topics, which more traditional media has honed in, on include criticism of NBC for the delayed broadcasting of events to primetime. Whether satellite stations would have had it any other way , interestingly, has not made a significant impact on the discussion. Having said that, stories covering NBC and what is being tweeted seems to be rising again (see the following trend line chat below). Equally damning of both NBC and Twitter is their agreement making Twitter the official narrator of the Olympics, and in nearly the same breadth Guy Adams, The Independent’s Los Angeles correspondent, having his Twitter account blocked when he posted a colourful tweet complaining of NBC’s choice to favour revenues rather than journalistic integrity, “The man responsible for NBC pretending the Olympics haven’t started yet is Gary Zenkel,..” referring to the delay of the Opening Ceremony.
Athletes have embraced Twitter in some cased for the first time as an avenue to communicate with their nation and their fans. Messages of thanks for support and apologies for not capturing a medal for their country are interspersed with cries of support and enthusiasm from the public. There are lessons to be learned as well , a 17-year-old (@rileyy_69) was recently arrested after sending a malicious tweet to Olympic diver, Tom Daley following his failure to achieve a medal during the final. Tom chose to re-tweet the comment which increased his support.
These are but two examples that sit within a larger set of coverage in the more traditional media. Both print and web/social media are looking to Twitter to guide what interests the reader. And, in many cases the reader is the driving force.
