Twitter breaks record, 24.1 million Super Bowl Game Tweets
The Super Bowl offered a great script for a blowout evening of tweeting, peaking at 231,500 tweets-per-minute during the power outage and 268,000 tweets-per-minute at the end of Beyonce’s half-time show.
This year’s Super Bowl started with the Ravens crushing the 49ers. Then after a 108-yard kickoff return by the Ravens at the beginning of the second half, a power outage delayed the game for more than 30 minutes. Following the delay, the 49ers got their mojo working and the two teams, and two brother coaches, battled intensely to the finish.
This is a great script for a blowout evening of tweeting by football lovers, advertising geeks, and Beyonce fans.
According to Twitter, the game and halftime show with Beyonce spawned 24.1 million tweets. The 2013 Super Bowl tweeting surpassed the November presidential election, when there were 23 million tweets over a six-hour period.
Beyonce’s halftime performance generated 5.5 million of the 24.1 million tweets, with a peak of 268,000 tweets-per-minute at the end of her performance. The non-halftime peak was 231,500 tweets-per-minute during the power outage.
Last year’s Super Bowl between the New York Giants and New England Patriots had 13.7 million game-related tweets, with a peak of 12,333 per second. Madonna’s halftime performance at the 2012 Super Bowl peaked at 10,245 tweets-per-second. The 2011 Super Bowl peaked at 4,064 tweets-per-second. Twitter has not yet offered tweet-per-second statistics for the 2013 Super Bowl.
Other heavy tweet-per-minute moments included:
• 108-yard kickoff return for Ravens TD by Jones: 185,000
• Time expires; Ravens win: 183,000
• Jones catches 56 yard pass for Ravens TD: 168,000
• Gore TD for 49ers: 131,000
Of course, every year Twitter is expected to set records. The company can count on tens of millions more tweeters added to the ranks every year. The number of active Twitter users rose to more than 200 million at the end of 2012, compared to 140 million last May. Twitter has more than 500 million registered users worldwide — 300 million have an account but are not active tweeters.
