The 2012 Olympic opening ceremony generated more tweets than the entire Beijing Olympic Games

"Twitter said Friday’s Olympics opening ceremony in London sparked 9.66 million mentions on the short-messaging service, already topping the total number of Twitter posts during the entire 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
But in what many have called the first social media Olympics, Friday’s opening ceremony wasn’t even the most “social” TV event of all time. That record, according to social-media analysis firm Bluefin Labs, continues to be held by the 2012 Grammy Awards telecast, followed by this year’s BET Awards.
Twitter has made a big bet on the Olympics, striking a deal with NBC that meant the creation of a Twitter-edited Olympics events page with tweets from athletes, fans, NBC TV personalities and other people with an inside look at the Games. Among the most widely circulated Twitter posts was this one from Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the Web who had a star turn in Friday’s opening ceremony. (Cue the 9,000th joke here about Al Gore.)
Twitter said the 9.66 million worldwide tweets was measured from 8 p.m. London time, an hour before the kickoff of the opening ceremony, until the end of the tape-delayed U.S. broadcast on NBC."
Source:  WSJ, 28th July 2012