London 2012 Paralympics Prove To Be Online Success

The London 2012 Paralympic Games proved to be an online success with record figures for its website and social media channels. Figures published on Tuesday for the period Aug. 29 to Sept. 9 show:

• Nearly 2 million people visited www.paralympic.org
• Close to 9 million views of videos featuring London 2012 sporting action or ceremonies uploaded to www.youtube.com/paralympicsporttv
• 130% growth of IPC’s official Facebook group
• Four-figure growth of athlete Facebook fan pages
• 50% increase in followers of @paralympic
• More than 300,000 views of behind the scenes videos provided by athlete Samsung Bloggers

A new SMART player, provided by Atos, the IPC’s worldwide IT partner, proved popular with visitors wanting to watch live action, results, statistics and social media in one integrated window. Great Britain’s 100m T44 Gold-Medalist Johnnie Peacock saw his Facebook fan page grow by 3,258% during 12 days of competition, whilst his Twitter increased by 1,305%. Irish sprinter Jason Smyth, a Gold Medal winner in the 100m and 200m T13 events, enjoyed 2,174% growth in Facebook fans. A collaboration between the IPC, LOCOG and Samsung called Samsung Bloggers also proved popular with 47 athletes producing more than 600 behind-the-scenes video blogs in London. These have already had more than 350,000 views on YouTube (IPC).