Boris Olympics dance was No 1 hit with titterers and twitterers

The London Olympics was the subject of 150 million tweets, Twitter revealed yesterday.

Boris Johnson’s cringe-worthy dad-dancing at the closing ceremony was the most talked-about event by Britain’s 10 million users in a single moment, the social network has revealed in its review of the year.

The Spice Girls’ performance, which the London mayor was dancing to alongside David and Samantha Cameron, amassed the largest spike in Games-related tweets with more than 116,000 per minute.

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The 2012 Games, the Euro 2012 football tournament and The X Factor dominated Twitter’s UK top ten of most talked-about events, based on the most tweets by Britons on a subject in a single second.

Worldwide, Barack Obama’s succinct message “Four more years” to signal victory over Mitt Romney in the US presidential election in November became the most retweeted comment ever.

Twitter UK director Bruce Daisley said: “The big moments that set the heart racing tend to be played out on Twitter.

“It’s some great British moments – Boris dancing was a defining moment for people watching (the Olympics) and got the pulse racing on Twitter.

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“The fascinating thing really is the contrast (of events). Politics is becoming very strong but it is interesting that some things like the new Archbishop of Canterbury were announced on Twitter.”

After Boris dancing, the next most talked-about events on Twitter were England losing on penalties to Italy in Kiev on June 24 followed by Ella Henderson being voted off The X Factor on November 18, based on the number of tweets sent per second.

Usain Bolt retaining the men’s 100m sprint title at the Olympics on August 5 came fourth.

Despite headlines over a fall in ratings, X Factor made up two further top 10 spots, with Rylan Clark and Kye Sones going head to head on November 4 at six and judge Gary Barlow storming off when Carolynne Poole was voted off in favour of Rylan in October at eight.

The only other event to make the top 10 was Cristiano Ronaldo’s goal which gave Real Madrid an unassailable 3-2 lead against Manchester City in the Champions League in September.