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Sochi problems Twitter accounts outnumber record Winter Olympics followers

Sochi problems Twitter accounts outnumber record Winter Olympics followers

By Reuters | Updated: 19 February 2014 10:43 IST

Winter Olympics organisers on Tuesday trumpeted their social media reach, outclassing the 2010 figures after two days, but they still trail an account registering problems at Sochi by tens of thousands of followers.

Russia's first Winter Olympics struggled with some teething problems and a dedicated Twitter account registering the hiccups quickly racked up followers.

@SochiProblems currently has 340,000 followers compared to 263,000 for the English-speaking @Sochi2014 official Twitter account. There were a further 171,000 followers for the Russian language account.

The Games were initially struggling with still incomplete hotel rooms that left some athletes and visitors fuming, while a round-up of stray dogs also set the internet alight.

A technical hitch at the Games opening ceremony light show with one of the five Olympic rings failing to open and unusually warm weather threatening to undermine the quality of the competition venues added to the early problems.

Sochi organisers, however, have had more visitors on their website in two days than Vancouver 2010 had for the entire Games.

Officials said that with five days of competition left they had already reached about 90 percent of the figure reached by the London 2012 Summer Olympics -- a far bigger worldwide event.

"At peak time during the opening ceremony we had more than 10,000 tweets per minute about the Games and since the opening ceremony Twitter reported more than 10 million tweets about the Olympics," Sochi Games spokeswoman Alexandra Kosterina said.

© Thomson Reuters 2014

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