Breaking down Johnny Quinn’s door-breaking Tweet

Photos of the Olympic Village and selfies with other athletes are fine, but sometimes a picture of a random happening can be even more buzzworthy. Case in point: Johnny Quinn (@JohnnyQuinnUSA) — American bobsledder, Olympic medalist hopeful and bathroom door-breaker extraordinaire.

After Quinn successfully escaped from the Olympic Village bathroom in which he was trapped on February 8, he snapped a photo of the damage done and tweeted it out.

Spontaneous and funny, the tweeted photo of his bathroom door has made Quinn an Olympic phenomenon — even before he competes this Sunday.

In addition, by looking at the related headlines feature on Quinn’s Tweet, you can see just how many publications have embedded it in an article — 32 and counting.

The popularity speaks to the power and potential of tweeting a photo, and having a story about that photo. Equally important, Quinn’s humorous Tweet was topical. It continued and amplified the trend of people tweeting their #SochiProblems (a hashtag used more than 331,000 times in the last week, according to Twitter internal data).

Two days after getting stuck in the bathroom, lightning struck Quinn again: He got stuck in an elevator with two teammates. Naturally, he tweeted a photo from the scene.

Do you know of other innovative uses of Twitter? Write to mediablog@twitter.com.