For months leading up to the 2012 Olympics in London, the event was hyped as the "world's first social Games." Now that the Olympics and all their athletic glory have finally passed after 17 exciting days, which athletes and events captured most of the social conversation?
Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt was the big winner, with more than 960,000 mentions during the Games. American swimmer Michael Phelps took social silver with over 830,000 mentions. British diver Tom Daley was the third-most buzzed about athlete, with close to 490,000 mentions -- partially, no doubt, the result of a widely publicized incident in which he outed a hateful troll on Twitter.
[More from Mashable: 10 Things People Love and Hate About Pinterest]
Among sports, soccer sparked the most chatter, followed by basketball and volleyball. McDonald's took home branding gold by generating more than 150,000 social mentions. Coca-Cola and Visa placed second and third among corporations looking to capitalize on the Games.
These stats all come to us via the social media monitoring platform Salesforce Radian6. The platform takes into account a total of more than 150 million sources including Twitter, Facebook, blogs, YouTube and message boards. Check out the infographic below for the full picture of how what 2012 Olympics topics had the social media world buzzing.
[More from Mashable: Shark Week 25: 7 Ways to Play Along Online]
Thumbnail image courtesy of iStockphoto, PeskyMonkey
This story originally published on Mashable here.