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While the 2012 London Olympics hasn't gone entirely to plan for Australia, some good news is that our relatively small 20 million-strong sporting nation is punching well above its weight in the Social Media Olympics.

Data posted on Social Media font-of-all-knowledge-site Mashable at the half-way-point shows that Australia is more than a force to be reckoned with at this Summer Olympics when it comes to social media participation.  Placing fifth after world super-powers China, USA, Great Britain and France comes the Lucky Country ahead of Russia, Germany, Italy and even Japan.  

 

Credit: Radian6

The data - derived from salesforce.com social media monitoring platform Radian6 - is illustrative of the social media powerhouse Australia has become.  Australia has shown consistent strength in Social Media participation for years - as Nielsen figures revealed - in 2010.  In fact Australians spend the most hours a week on Social Media on average, ahead even of the USA.  

OlympicsSocial Media engagement in Australia is ever growing, and we've written here before about its prevalence down under.  The Olympics is yet another example of how engaged Australians are with Twitter and other channels when showing support for sporting heroes.  In fact a couple of incidents have suggested we are a little too engaged! To date - Sally Pearson has been the main beneficiary of that support, trumping her fellow competitors with the most mentions at well over 30,000 - with Stephanie Rice a distant second.  

Credit: Radian6

Indeed Social Media has become a mainstream medium for celebrating Olympic success all around the world and the IOC is celebrating this Olympics as the first "Social Olympics".  As if to underline  the point, even our Prime Minister jumped online to trumpet Australia's success on the track: