Lim Yung-Hui, Contributor
I write about tech products and business strategies.
Lee Chong Wei’s Jump Smash at London 2012 Olympic
According to Twitter*, there were 16,847 tweets per minute mentioning about the outcome of the Sunday match. The mentions of Lee Chong Wei himself have spiked to over 9,200 tweets per minutes!
In total, Lee Chong Wei garnered nearly 500,000 mentions on Sunday, compared to Lin Dan’s 238,000 mentions. He also added close to 50,000 new followers on Twitter in 24 hours after his match. And hashtag #ThankYouLeeChongWei reached No. 3 in the Twitter’s Worldwide Trends list after the match ended.
The trend was mainly driven by two factors. First was a Nation’s expectation. As Jonathan Liew of The Telegraph wrote: he [Lee Chong Wei] may be Malaysia’s only genuinely world-class athlete, with all the crushing expectation that entails. Indeed, 28 million Malaysians have placed high hope on him to win nation’s first Olympic gold medal. Secondly is the highly enthusiastic Twitter user base in Malaysia. When combined together, you have a nation’s heartbreak and consolation expressed fervently, in real time, on Twitter.
Here are the most popular tweets, with the highest Retweets, after the Sunday match:
* Many thanks to Kaori Saito of Twitter Japan.
(Follow me on Twitter @zhiQ)