Despite #NBCFail, NBC and Twitter Say Partnership Was Success

If you followed the griping by Twitter users about NBC’s handling of the Olympic Games, you might think the NBC-Twitter Olympics partnership was an epic disaster. NBC’s decision to time-delay most events prompted angry kvetching on Twitter and quickly popularized the hashtag #NBCFail. But according to Twitter and NBC, the jokes and critiques made up only a slim minority — under 0.5 percent — of all Twitter messages about the Olympics. They say Twitter commentary drove more viewers to turn on their television sets and watch the games than ever before, even hours after the events had actually happened. According to Twitter, there were 150 million tweets about the London Olympics, compared to 125,000 tweets about Beijing. And there were 11.26 billion Twitter “impressions,” or tweets with “core terms” about the Olympics, like #Olympics and #London2012. NBC and Twitter say social media helped drive a record number of viewers to NBC’s prime time coverage: With 219.4 million viewers, NBC’s time-delayed coverage of the London games made for the most-watched television event in history — and a 2 percent increase from the 215 million who watched the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.