Friday night saw the start of the Olympic Games, for most anyway as the football and archery started early, with the Opening Ceremony.  The British public are always the most cynical when it comes to what we can achieve as a nation and few would have anticipated what was to come from Danny Boyle and his team of thousands.

In total there were 9.66m tweets mentioning the Opening Ceremony from the time it started at 8pm until the end of the broadcast in the US.  Twitter has proved itself to not only be the place for breaking news but also an extension of our outpouring of emotions.  If we love or hate something it is the platform we go to tell people.

The inventor of the internet, Tim Berners-Lee (@timberners_lee), who made a surprise appearance in the ceremony tweeted from the stage and gained almost 10,000 retweets.

There were tweets from celebrities, athletes taking part in the ceremony, official accounts posting pictures every few minutes and people watching on TV at home or in bars.  It was an event we knew would break all records on the platform and will continue to do so during the tournament as the big finals come about.

It was an amazing event and one we should all be proud of.  The infusion of the british sense of humour was a masterstroke, especially the appearances of The Queen in the James Bond sequence and Rowan Atkinson (as Mr Bean) within the orchestra playing Chariots of Fire.

We are going to get a better insight into what happens during a Games and what athletes get up to whilst in the village over the next 3 weeks than ever before.  The best way to follow it is to set up a list of your favourite athletes (the @TeamGB account has a list of their athletes already for you to follow).  It’s well worth doing.

Here are a selection of our favourite tweets and pictures that helped start London 2012 off with such a bang.