Olympics marks 2012 countdown with competitive tweeting tourney

You may not have the money to fly off to London to witness the 2012 Olympics live, but that doesn't mean you can't be part of the world's most anticipated sporting event. To mark the year before the event sets off in July 2012, the official website of the 2012 Summer Olympics began running an interactive contest designed to measure the support of different countries to their different sporting teams, technology blog Mashable has reported. Users from different countries would simply have to submit a tweet through the interactive site and include the hashtags "#1yeartogo" along with the three-letter identifier for their respective country (#PHI in the Philippines' case). The website will then cull these tweets and rank the top 20 countries with the biggest fan base. As of posting time, Brazil is at first place with 19 percent of the total 71,373 tweets sent through the site. The Philippines, dubbed the social networking capital of the world, is ably trailing along at the seventh mark, next only to Russia, Mexico, Canada, US and Great Britain on the list. Interest for the London Olympics, held only every four years, have gone up exponentially over the past few months, with tickets for the showcase opening and closing ceremonies already sold out as early as April. More than 20 million tickets were applied for in the six-week window for ticket applications, but only 6.6 million tickets were on offer, reports said. In the previous summer Olympic games in Beijing, China, the Philippines sent only 15 athletes to compete in eight sports: athletics, boxing, diving, shooting, swimming, weightlifting and taekwondo. The 15-man team failed to brought home any medal in 2008 save for a gold, a silver and two bronze medals in wushu, which did not count in the official tally since wushu is only a demonstration sport. — RSJ, GMA News