Saturday 4 August 2012

How the Social Web Is Talking About the Summer Olympics [CHARTS]

0 comments

We’re about halfway through the 2012 Summer Olympics, and social media has played a bigger role for fans than ever before. But who and what have gotten the most buzz?
To find out, we got a slew of information from social media monitoring platform Salesforce Radian6. Its data takes into account a total of more than 150 million sources including Twitter, Facebook, blogs, YouTube and message boards. Below are some of Radian6′s more interesting findings from the July 27 opening ceremony through midday Friday. (One quick disclaimer: the data monitors mostly English-language shares, with obviously has impacts results.)

The United States so far is winning the Olympics in both the physical and digital worlds, according to Radian6′s findings, with 43 total medals and more than 15 million social mentions. Great Britain is second in social mentions at about 3 million, exceeding its fourth-place medal performance to date. The chart below shows the top 10 countries for Olympic-themed social mentions so far:

Among individual athletes, American swimmers Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte lead the Radian6 standings. Phelps, who broke the world record for career Olympic medals this week, is the far and away leader with nearly 600,000 social mentions that also included Olympic keywords. This chart breaks down the top 10:

Phelps didn’t dominate this year like he did in 2008, of course, but social sentiment surrounding him has still be overwhelmingly positive, at 65%. The chart below shows how the Phelps buzz has trended over the past week and, predictably, it hit a massive spike when got his record-setting 19th medal:

Finally, we get to the U.S. women’s gymnastics squad, which took home the team competition gold in dramatic fashion and captured the hearts of many. Gabby Douglas, who also became the first African-American to win the women’s all-around competition, leads the way here. She’s followed by Jordyn Wieber, who came into London with sky high expectations only to falter in her quest for individual gold. This chart shows how the entire “Fab 5,” as the team came to be known, stacks up in social buzz:

0 comments:

Post a Comment