Joy and sorrow were instant

[1]

Come Sunday and the biggest sporting event of all time, the Olympics, will come to an end — bringing to close three weeks full of action-packed competition, a roller coaster ride of emotions and a healthy inter-mingling of superstars from across the globe who have given their best and stretched the limits of physical human boundaries.

This edition of Olympics, hosted by London, have been extensively covered by the media and has been, without an ounce of doubt, the most talked about event in recent times.

So it does not come as a surprise that most of the action is happening on social networking websites, such as Twitter, as people share incredible achievements of these athletes.

For most of those on the move, thanks to the prevalence of such websites, information was not more than a click away. Sheer joy or sadness was instant, and so were the news about incredulous feats.

Even athletes used the social network to share photos and status updates that take their followers inside the Games.

So what were all the folks talking about in the event within the first 10 days?

Through those 10 days, the Olympics-relates tweet count crossed a staggering 28.4 million tweets and users worldwide sent an average of 2,000 tweets per minute. T

he touched a peak of around 14000 tweets a minute, as compared to a mere 6000 tweets during the Royal wedding.

The sport that was most talked-about was Swimming, followed by gymnastics, basketball, soccer and volleyball.
Athletes were not left far behind too in the most-talked about category. At a staggering 574,000 mentions, American swimmer Michael Phelps led the pack.

The start swimmer was followed by fellow countryman and basketball star LeBron James, British diver Tom Daley, Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt and American hooper Kevin Durant.

Of course Bolt's popularity increased manifolds once the second half of the Games started, as and when much of the Olympic attention turned from swimming and gymnastics to track and field.