Gabby Douglas May Be the Women's Gymnastics Champion at the 2012 Summer Olympics, But Fellow 'Fierce Five' Member McKayla Maroney Is the Champion in Social Media

PALO ALTO, Calif., Aug. 10, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Attensity, the leading provider of social analytics and engagement applications for Social CRM, has released an analysis of top social media conversations and mentions from the 2012 Summer Olympics. Using Attensity Analyze, the company's social analytics application, Attensity identified and analyzed hundreds of thousands of comments about the Olympics posted on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, news sites, forums, videos and social and online sources starting from the swimming and gymnastics trials and leading up to the closing ceremony. The results from the entire data set from June 24-August 7 show that social media users expressed an overwhelming 98 percent positive sentiment toward the Olympics, a percentage consistent with Attensity's previous analysis of the games running through July 23. Attensity also found that sentiment toward American swimmer Michael Phelps, which was fairly negative compared to Lochte in the last analysis, reversed as he gained momentum in his final races and was proclaimed the "greatest Olympian ever." Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte remained neck and neck in social volume until Phelps edged out Lochte during the races. Attensity Analyze shows the "why" in the spikes of social conversation for Phelps per day. The most-used, Olympics-related Twitter handles remained focused around rumors of a performance by pop group One Direction. And, social media insight around the Olympics since Attensity's last analysis focused largely on the U.S. women's gymnastics team and a look into the athletes' worlds driven by the emotions from both the worldwide and hometown fans.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120810/SF55940)

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110222/SF51317LOGO)

The full Attensity report is available as a free download at http://www.attensity.com/2012/08/10/2012-olympics-social-media-analysis-part-ii/ and summarized on the Attensity blog at blog.attensity.com, where charts and images can be pulled for repurposing.

"As one of the most exciting games in history, with an unprecedented number of star athletes, the 2012 Summer Olympics has been a topic perfectly fit for Attensity's social analytics solutions," said Michelle de Haaff, vice president of strategy and corporate development at Attensity. "The sentiment expressed on social networks toward the games has continued to thrill and surprise us, as we moved from analysis of the key swimmers, to gymnasts this time around."

Attensity's data reveals that, while Gabby Douglas won the all-around gold at the final gymnastics event, the most buzzed-about "Fierce Five" member, taking in the entire period (June 24-August 7), is McKayla Maroney, earning 30,374 comments in social media and far surpassing her teammates who were all in the same range between 23,000 and 25,000 comments.

What accounts for this discrepancy is Maroney having been heavily considered a shoo-in in advance for Olympic gold and then making a facial expression when accepting the silver medal after a devastating fall that would become the subject of the latest internet meme frenzy. The nuances in the sentiment and trends were identified with Attensity Analyze to accurately characterize these conversations from public sources. The actionable information can be used in contact centers and marketing with Attensity's social engagement solution, Attensity Respond, to route messages to the appropriate person to respond. Attensity also provides the world's first real-time, semantically annotated social media data stream as a cloud service, the Attensity Pipeline.

About Attensity™
Attensity's social analytics and engagement solutions are the choice of the world's leading brands for Social CRM. Attensity is the only company that gives business users the ability to analyze millions of real-time customer conversations from any online, social media or internal source, and extract the industry's most accurate insights to drive business decisions. From its headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., Attensity is powering the Social CRM strategies of companies such as Charles Schwab, Cisco, EMC, JetBlue Airways, Lloyd's Banking Group, Symantec, Starwood Hotels & Resorts, Travelocity and Whirlpool. Visit www.attensity.com and follow the company at blog.attensity.com, on Twitter @Attensity, and on facebook.com/Attensity.

©2012 Attensity Group. Attensity is a trademark of Attensity Group in the United States and/or other countries. Other brand and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. All rights reserved.

Contacts:
Michelle de Haaff, Vice President of Corporate Development, (650) 433-1700, [email protected] 
Lisa Hawes, Sterling Communications, (408) 884-5155, [email protected]

SOURCE Attensity