Figures revealed today show that during the period of the Paralympics, which took place from August 29 to September 9, nearly two million people visited the IPC website while there were just under nine million views of videos featuring London 2012 sporting action or Ceremonies uploaded to youtube.com/paralympicsporttv.

The Paralympics also saw a monumental 130 per cent growth of IPC's official Facebook group with a 50 per cent increase in followers of @paralympic, the IPC's Twitter account.

"We said prior to the Games that we expected London 2012 to be a digital Games however even these numbers have surpassed our expectations," said the IPC director of communications Craig Spence.

"By embracing new technologies and media it is not just the IPC who enjoyed astronomical figures during the greatest Paralympic Games ever but so have international sport federations, National Paralympic Committees and London 2012.

"One of our objectives for London 2012 was to raise the profile of leading athletes.

"In terms of social media we appear to have achieved this with many athletes enjoying significant growth in their Facebook and Twitter followings."

Of the 1.9 million people that visited paralympic.org during the course of the Games, one in six visitors came from the UK with the United States, Germany, Poland and Canada making up the top five visiting countries.

Ireland's Jason Smyth was one of several athletes who provided blogs during the Paralympics that helped make London 2012 popular online

Day one of competition saw more visitors to the site than the whole of the Beijing 2008 Paralympics, a trend that continued throughout London 2012, while over 780 hours of live sport were broadcast on the website throughout London 2012 across five channels with commentary in English and Spanish.

A new SMART player, provided by the IPC's worldwide IT partner Atos, proved popular, as did many athletes.

Britain's 100 metre T44 gold medallist Jonnie Peacock, who defeated the likes of South Africa's Oscar Pistorius in the blue-ribbon event of the Games, saw his Facebook fan page grow by 3,258 per cent during 12 days of competition whilst his Twitter increased by 1,305 per cent.

Irish visually impaired sprinter Jason Smyth, who won gold in both the 100m and 200m T13 events, enjoyed 2,174 per cent growth in Facebook fans while Britain's four-time London 2012 Paralympic cycling champion Sarah Storey, saw her Twitter followers grow by 178 per cent.

There was also success for the London 2012 website as over 10 million unique users visited london2012.com more than 25 million times during the Paralympics while a further 5.8 million people upgraded their London 2012 App to the Paralympic version.

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