2012 Olympics: Competitive tweeting

As athletes around the world are set to compete fiercely in the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, fans engage in another physical competition of their own starting from now – by using their fingers.

The website for 2012 Olympic and Paralympic now features an interactive contest with the aim of discovering which country has the largest online fan base, reports Mashable.

Fans represent their countries and are judged accordingly through the number of tweets, and the number of YouTube videos and Flickr photos posted. The top 20 countries will then be ranked.

Social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube play a huge role in encouraging an overwhelming number of people to participate in sporting events, either as fans watching from home or at one of the Olympic venues. Twitter users set an impressive record of 7,196 tweets per second in this month’s FIFA Women’s World Cup final game.

The competition is already hot now, with Great Britain in the lead of more than 20,000 tweets, followed by Brazil, the U.S., Canada and the Netherlands. The Asian presence vis-à-vis the West appears to be minimal.

For us to be considered, tweets need to include the hashtag #1YearToGo with the three-letter code for your country. Let your fingers do the talking!

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