187 million tweets, 1.5 billion Facebook posts sent out during the #Rio2016 Olympics

Fans around the world turned to Twitter to cheer for thrilling victories, engage with athletes, see highlights, and share in the live experience. Here’s a summary of how the 2016 Olympics unfolded, as told through Twitter data.

There were over 187 Million Tweets sent out about the Games and in total, this led to 75 billion impressions (views on and off Twitter) of Tweets about the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.

The roar of the crowd was felt on Twitter live every day and night of the Games. However, Brazilian soccer player @neymarjr’s game winning penalty kick for Brazil in a shootout vs. #GER in the gold medal football match took top honors.

With five more #gold medals, Michael Phelps led the Twitter conversation leaderboard. The most retweeted athlete tweet was that of Zac Efron kissing 19-year-old Simone Biles, who won a record of four gold medals in women’s gymnastics in a single game. The tweet got 163,000 retweets and nearly 459,000 likes.

Portuguese soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo post congratulating Jamaican sprinter Bolt for his gold medal victories in the 100-meter, 200-meter, and 4×100-meter relay was the most loved Facebook post. Bolt’s gold medal win in the 100 meters race tweet was also the second most tweeted tweet during the competition.

Also the newly launched Twitter Moments kept fans around the world connected to the live #Rio2016 moments, Tweets and conversation.

“We launched a new Rio 2016 section in Moments and fans had the option to follow country specific Moments, will lasted throughout the Games. This placed the best of what was happening with your team in your timeline for the entirety of the Olympics,” read a statement from on Twitter Blog.

However, on social media, Facebook won gold in the Olympics social media conversation posting a record 1.5 billion post interaction by 227 million people. Facebook users primarily discussed swimming, gymnastics and track and field.