SINGAPORE – Online searches and social media activity skyrocketed in Singapore on Saturday (Aug 13) as swimmer Joseph Schooling triumphed at the Rio Olympics and won Singapore's first ever gold medal at the Summer Games.

The number of Google searches in Singapore for "Joseph Schooling gold" spiked sharply after the 21-year-old won his 100m butterfly race at about 9.14am. There were about 5,000 searches on the subject right up to about 1pm, making "Joseph Schooling gold" the top search item in Singapore for the morning, according to Google Trends.  

News about Schooling's feat similarly dominated Facebook, the most popular social media platform in Singapore. While no official figures are available, data from social analytics platform CrowdTangle point to a major spike in Facebook activity after Schooling beat the likes of American legend Michael Phelps to the gold.

By about 2pm, there were over 655,000 interactions - comments, likes and shares - with content published by Singapore media outlets such as TODAY and Channel NewsAsia. The lion's share of the interactions came after 9.14am.

On Twitter, Schooling's victory sparked 8,500 tweets per minute, worldwide, at its peak at 9.17am.

Schooling took to Facebook shortly before 2pm - 3am in Rio de Janeiro - to post a photo of his gold medal with the message: "Well... That was nuts! Thank you for all the support and wishes. I'll see ya later, Rio." His post drew 2,500 likes in just 15 minutes.