Happy & gloRIOus and most definitely #victoRIOus. Welcome home @TeamGB! #greattobeBAck #GBR https://t.co/iy6anYBtLe pic.twitter.com/VBLqxd1pwd

— British Airways (@British_Airways) August 23, 2016

So, the Olympics are over for another four years. Having gorged myself on the heroics of TeamGB, I’m personally suffering from withdrawl.

TeamGB’s social media team also did a sterling job over the two weeks, sharing content about our athletes’ magnificent performances.

Their two primary platforms based on fans and followers were Facebook and Twitter. Their Twitter account has an impressive 822,000 followers.

But there’s another relevant Twitter account with an even larger audience, and it’s dormant.

@London2012.

This account has 1.32 million followers. It’s tweeted seven times since the end of the Paralympics in 2012, the last in July 2013.

Since then, nothing.

Will this account and its audience of 1.3 million potentially sport mad followers just sit and fester forever?

And it isn’t just the number of followers that’s impressive, it’s the quality too.

Here are some examples of significant followers of @London2012 who don’t follow @TeamGB:

@coldplay, @WayneRooney, @idriselba, @astonmartin, @thetimes, @Harrods, @EvanHD, @cabinetofficeuk, @WomensRunning, @KathViner and @andyburnhammp.

The identity shouldn’t get in the way of using it. Behind every account is a unique TwitterId (it’s 19900778 in @London2012’s case if you’re interested). This means you can change your @username and still maintain your follower and following relationships. Here are the Twitter instructions to do this.

I don’t know who “owns” this asset, but surely whoever it is could think of a change of identity that would still be relevant to the majority of its followers. Perhaps it could have been used to support the Games’ legacy? @UK_Sport’s 91,400 followers rather pales in comparison.

And @London2012 isn’t the only account like this.

What are the BBC going to do with accounts relating to shows that are no more, like @BBCTheVoiceUK and its 521,000 followers, or the @ChrisMoylesShow with 518,000?

Nothing by the looks of it.

On a sombre note, there are accounts that become dormant because someone dies. Examples like @ebertchicago and @davidbowiereal demonstrate that even then there can be circumstances where it’s appropriate for the accounts to live on.

As of writing Lissted‘s data shows 28,401 accounts with 10,000+ followers who haven’t tweeted in the last 90 days.

Not all of these accounts will be dormant. Some like Ed Sheeran may be just “buggering off for a bit“. But many will.

Between them they have a combined untapped group of 1.5 trillion followers.

Now there’s a number worthy of a gold medal!