As the one-year countdown to the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympic Games begins, social media takes centre stage as the official Games website launches a competitive tweet for fans across the globe. 

The London 2012 organisers have launched a Twitter competition to find out which country has the most online fans. People around the world can post their messages on Twitter on the #1yeartogo page.

Countries will be ranked according to the number of tweets, YouTube videos and Flickr pictures they submit. So far, the page has received more than 35,000 tweets 

It’s just one part of London Olympics organisers’ social media strategy. Last month, it launched a social media policy on what athletes are allowed to tweet about during the games. 

Twitter is a powerful tool to promote sporting events. In February, Twitter set a new tweets per second (TPS) record for a sporting event. The Super Bowl XLV had a peak of 4,064 TPS, which was smashed last week when the Women’s World Cup soccer final got 7,196 TPS during the nail-biting climax. 

Posted by

Sarah Wright