The buzz is building about the Closing Ceremonies for the London Olympics. Expectations are high thanks to the success and overall positive response of the Opening Ceremonies. One of the talked about guests are the Spice Girls. Yes, the girl power nineties band is rumoured to be one of the groups performing at the closing ceremonies and people are loving it.

In the last week there has been approximately 45,000 tweets about them.

They’re not the only ones rumoured to be performing on Sunday. Other names include Pink Floyd, Kate Bush, Blur, The Rolling Stone and New Order.

People are indulging in speculation all over Twitter:

Who do you want to see in the Closing Ceremonies?

It seemed that everyone on Twitter was watching the game between the Canadian and American women’s soccer teams on August 6. Canadians raged at the 4-3 loss to the Americans and a lot of comments were directed at the Norwegian referee, Christina Pedersen and her controversial call to penalize Canada for holding the ball for more than six seconds.  (more…)

You can’t talk about the London Olympics without talking about the British Royal Family. One member, Zara Phillips, is part of Great Britain’s equestrian team, Princes William and Harry and the Duchess of Cambridge are all ambassadors for the games and Zara Phillips’ mother, Princess Anne competed in the 1976 games. (more…)

Update: Guy Adams is back on Twitter as of this afternoon.

Twitter and NBC aren’t looking too good in the social space thanks to actions they took against Guy Adams, a UK foreign correspondent for the Independent.

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The Olympics is a heavily-sponsored event and one of the perks of being a sponsor is getting tickets to Olympic events. This weekend, the media and everyone else noticed the vast sprawl of empty seats at the diving and gymnastic events. Where were the sponsors? If the sponsors weren’t going to use their tickets, why weren’t they given to people who were willing to pay for them? All these questions were asked this weekend. The London Olympic committee said they would look into the situation and the sponsors have denied that they’re responsible for the empty seats.

So what’s the social sphere saying?

There was a lot of activity on all social platforms but Twitter was the dominant form. In the blogs, the sentiment was not favourable. People were angry at the perceived preference given to sponsors and the sense that the sponsors didn’t care about the actual games. The UK was the top country at almost 63 per cent. Commentary peaked on July 29.

Finally our BuzzGraph and WordCloud. Based on the BuzzGraph, it looks like Lord Sebastian Coe might have some explaining to do.

Information was gathered from MAP using the search terms “London Olympics” AND “Sponsors” AND “Empty seats.” 

It’s just hours to go before the beginning of the Games of the XXX (30^th) Olympiad and buzz is building around director Danny Boyle’s opening ceremony. It’s estimated that up to one billion people will watch as Boyle’s  “Isle of Wonder” takes the stage in a celebration of “rural Britain” (according to the Telegraph). (more…)

The biggest amateur sporting event in the world is here! We can’t really called it by name thanks to the branding rules set out by the International Olympic Committee but you know what we’re talking about. We wanted to participate in our small way so the marketing team at Marketwire built this really cool dashboard so you can keep track of the buzz surrounding the Games.

We’re not keeping track of medals, what we’re doing is using Marketwire’s social media monitoring platforms, MAP and Heartbeat, to find out the true stories behind the games – what’s happening, what are the hot topics, who’s saying what? Where is it being said? What country is chatting the most?  That means the data is aggregated from global social media discussions.

We’re going to get really granular in the next two weeks. Feel free to suggest topics and use the information.

Related links:

Brilliant sporting event but safety still top of mind in London

The Social Olympics Ramp Up

If you’ve been following the news, you’ve heard that private security company G4S would not be able to provide enough trained staff in time. Despite that breach, chief executive Nick Buckles has said that G4S will be keeping the £57m ($90m CDN) fee.

London’s security issue hasn’t been helped by the report of lost buses , one carrying Americans and one carrying Australians. US hurdler Kerron Clement said on Twitter that his bus took four hours to go from Heathrow to the athletes’ village. (more…)