Last night was expected to see the 30m Olympic related tweet barrier broken.  Not bad for the first 7 days of the event as Twitter, as expected, has become the platform of choice for the Games.  It has grown so rapidly and become more important by the day in everyday life that we saw more tweets in the first day of London 2012 than the whole of the 2008 Beijing games combined– there were only 4m users back then!  This demonstrates the ever growing role twitter is playing in people’s enjoyment of live sports.

There have been other notable moments in this first week of the event.  Some athletes have voiced their displeasure about rule 40 on twitter. This conversation has also been amplified by Wired and MC Hammer and will be something that will become harder to govern and a source of debate for a long time top come.

There has also been an interesting debate on the impact of Twitter on the Olympics on ESPN.  Its interesting to hear opinions of those on the other side of the pond including Jason Falls, someone I have followed on Twitter for a long time.  Much of the brief conversation was around Rule 40 and whether athletes should be able to promote their sponsors or if they have to live by the IOC rules.  Here is the article and video.

Tom Daley has been one of the most talked about athletes at the Games.  He was mentioned 300k times in one day alone. The majority of this revolves around the fact that the man that abused him on Twitter had been arrested. The rest has come from admiring boys and girls. (31st July)

Bradley Wiggins dominated conversations with 140k tweets mentioning him. He has also been mentioned by high profile British figures such as the Prime Minister. (1st August)

Twitter have launched an interesting initiative with the organisers as they installed new cameras in Olympic venues all over London. They are tweeting fantastic photos with a “behind the scenes” perspective you can’t get anywhere else. Locations include underwater at the aquatic center, from the backboard of the basketball hoop, and the roof of Olympic Park.Here are the six cameras you can follow:

@L2012BballCam – over the basketball hoop
@L2012PoolCam – underwater in the aquatics center
@L2012GymCam – looking down onto the rhythmic gymnastics mat
@L2012TableCam – looking down onto the table tennis table
@L2012StadiumCam – on the Olympic Stadium roof, looking down onto the track
@L2012MatCam – looking down onto the judo/wrestling mat

Recently we saw a new face on Twitter as BBC presenter and former Olympian Ian Thorpe (@IanThorpe) signed up and sent his first Tweet. Do you think he has been influenced the huge band of BBC presenters who are also on the platform?