British diver Tom Daley has been named the world's most popular London 2012 Olympic athlete by social media monitoring group Starcount.
The British teenager broke the one million followers barrier on Twitter just one week into the Olympics, partly due to a controversial incident with an online troll. However Tom Daley's online popularity exploded once again over this past weekend as millions tuned in to watch him compete in the men's diving finals, in which he won a bronze medal.
Overall throughout the course of the Olympics Daley racked up an extraordinary 820,000 Facebook fans and 1.2 million Twitter followers as well as becoming one of the most talked about athletes on social media. According to Starcount this data makes him the most popular online star of this year's Olympics, winning the young British diver a Gold in social media.
Also popular this Olympic Games were Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, who gained one million new Facebook fans and 960,000 Twitter followers, and American swimmer Michael Phelps, who earned 840,000 new Facebook fans and one million Twitter followers.
Starcount has been monitoring the social media popularity and engagement metrics of competing athletes and teams throughout this year's Olympic Games.
The top ten Olympic athletes on social media at this year's games, according to Starcount.com, were:
01. Tom Daley - diving (British)
02. Usain Bolt - athletics (Jamaican)
03. Michael Phelps - swimming (American)
04. Gabrielle Douglas - gymnastics (American)
05. Jessica Ennis - athletics (British)
06. Sun Yang - swimming (Chinese)
07. Ryan Lochte - swimming (American)
08. Liu Xiang - athletics (Chinese)
09. Lin Dan - badminton (Chinese)
10. LeBron - basketball (American)
