Not only was the Super Bowl the number one television event of 2012, Mashable reported two Super Bowl XLVI moments that landed in Twitter’s record book. Twitter reaction during the Super Bowl hit 12,233 tweets per second at the end of the Patriots vs Giants game, with over 10,000 tweets per second during the halftime performance by Madonna. Last year’s Super Bowl TPS record was 4064.
The Giants beat the Patriots 21-17, with the game-winning touchdown by the Giants with 57 seconds left. In the last three minutes of the game, Twitter reports that there was an average of 10,000 tweets per second after Mario Manningham had an unbelievable sideline catch that led to the Giants win.
In Madonna’s halftime performance with Nicki Minaj, M.I.A. and Cee Lo Green had the second highest tweets per second record of the night. During a 5 minute period, there were over 8000 TPS, climaxing when M.I.A. gave the middle finger to the camera.
So besides this year’s Super Bowl, what other moments have set the top tweets per second records?
The number one simultaneously tweeted event was during the televising of a 25 year old anime movie called “Castle in the Sky.” This was broadcasted in Japan on December 9th, 2011. Viewers madly tweeted in a symbolic attempt to “cast a spell” during the movie. At the highest point, they sent 25,088 tweets in one second.
Before the Castle in the Sky event, the top tweeted moment was Beyonce’s pregnancy announcement during the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards. Beyonce made her pregnancy reveal by singing “I want you to feel the love that’s growing inside me” confirming that she would be having a baby with her husband Jay-Z.. At the end of the song, she dropped her microphone, unbuttoned herself and rubbed her visible baby bump.
The Beyonce MTV moment is now the fifth highest on the tweets-per-second list. Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow’s 80 yard touchdown pass in overtime on January 8th, 2012, nudged Beyonce down the list first. Then the two Super Bowl moments pushed Beyonce into fifth place. Other newsworthy events of 2011 that are no longer in the top 5 are the East Coast earthquake in August, the raid on Osama bin Laden in May, and the UK Royal wedding in April.
