Sina Weibo went crazy for Olympic opening ceremony: 119m messages sent

Turns out users of Chinese microblogging service Sina Weibo took to the first ever “social Olympics” with a gusto. During the opening ceremony alone, members of the social network sent 119-million messages.

In an official infographic, Sina Weibo details the total number of messages sent on the opening day of the games, as well as the most active locations and most spoken about topics. It is unclear what criteria were used, although it’s likely that reposts and comments were included.

As was to be expected, the vast majority — some 114-million — messages came from China, while the UK took silver with 2.4-million and the USA bronze 2.38-million. Video seriously dominated the Olympic content with some 49 350 000 Olympic clips shared on the day.

Twitter saw 9.66-million mentions of the Opening Ceremony from start to finish. A direct comparison of activity on the two social networks is, however, impossible as the two methodologies don’t match up.

As The Next Web notes, it’s also unclear whether or not the number of post on Sina Weibo beats out the social media record it set over Chinese New Year.

During the festivities, users on the service sent some 32 312 per second, while 481 207 messages were sent during the first minute of the year.

Despite being labelled the ‘Social Games’, people in London have been advised to “take it easy” on social networks. This after social networking activity caused broadcast issues and disrupted TV broadcasts.

According to Reuters, the issues flared up during the men’s road cycling race: “details on how far back the chasing pack was from the leaders [while] commentators were unable to get timing information due to issues surrounding the communications network of the GPS satellite navigation system.”