Sarah Hendrickson holds Twitter Q&A after making history

Thursday, 20 February 2014

Sarah Hendrickson (@schendrickson), the American ski jumper who became the first woman to jump — ever — at Olympics games took a break from her post-competition activities (such as watching ice dancing and collecting Valentines) to hold a Twitter Q&A.

The 19-year-old Utah native, who competed in the individual normal hill, spent nearly an hour on Monday answering fan questions on Twitter. To join the conversation, which was supported by @NBCOlympics, people could either tweet #AskSarah or simply reply to @schendrickson’s original Tweet.

She replied to a range of questions from the most challenging moment in her career (knee surgery) to the sense that her entire country is behind her. She also commented on the historical significance of her first jump at #Sochi2014.

On the day of her Q&A, Hendrickson drew 2.3 times as many favorites and 2.4 times as many retweets as the week prior, according to Twitter internal data. She was also mentioned on Twitter 4 times more than usual.

@NBCOlympics embedded a number of Hendrickson’s Tweets in a post about her Q&A.

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