Twitter breaks tweets per second record thanks to Beyonce

By Mike Dunn August 29, 2011

Twitter has played a very active and vital role in several recent world events by being able to quickly spread information amongst its users. Today Twitter announced that the service broke its previous tweets per second record during MTV’s Video Music Award show. Moments after Beyonce finished her performance at the award show she proceeded to open her jacket which revealed the baby bump that set Twitter a blaze with 8,868 tweets per second.

Beyonce’s twitter uproar unseated the women’s world cup as for the tweet per second record. After Japan upset the USA in the World Cup finals there were 7,196 tweets per second. Another game during the Women’s World Cup also generated over 7,100 tweets per second, Paraguay vs Brazil, but they came up a few tweets short of the record.

There were a number of other recent events that some might have expected to take the record instead of pregnancy announcement. Steve Jobs resigning as Apple’s CEO provided several thoughtful tweets, but did not produce the sheer volume of tweets as other events. The Virginia earthquake had a decent showing with 5,500 tweets per second.

Lady Gaga is still the reigning Twitter leader with just under 10 million followers, but President Obama is second with about a million less followers. The rest of the top ten are all celebrities with CNN’s official Twitter account coming in at number 13, and the NY Time’s account rounding out the top 25. With celebrities generally having more twitter follows than world leaders or company CEOs, or news outlets it’s easy to see why celebrity news cause an influx of tweets.

It is interesting to see what will set Twitter off on a tweeting frenzy, and it seems almost impossible to predict. All four events outlined in this story are completely different, but were all popular twitter topics. As the Twitter user base grows the current record is guaranteed to break in the near future, but what event will cause it remains a mystery.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Twitter

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Mike graduated from University of Arizona with a degree in poetry, and made his big break by writing love sonnets to the…

Social Media

Bluesky barrels toward 1 million new sign-ups in a day

Social media app Bluesky has picked nearly a million new users just a day after exiting its invitation-only beta and opening to everyone.

In a post on its main rival -- X (formerly Twitter) -- Bluesky shared a chart showing a sudden boost in usage on the app, which can now be downloaded for free for iPhone and Android devices.

Computing

How to make a GIF from a YouTube video

woman sitting and using laptop

Sometimes, whether you're chatting with friends or posting on social media, words just aren't enough -- you need a GIF to fully convey your feelings. If there's a moment from a YouTube video that you want to snip into a GIF, the good news is that you don't need complex software to so it. There are now a bunch of ways to make a GIF from a YouTube video right in your browser.

If you want to use desktop software like Photoshop to make a GIF, then you'll need to download the YouTube video first before you can start making a GIF. However, if you don't want to go through that bother then there are several ways you can make a GIF right in your browser, without the need to download anything. That's ideal if you're working with a low-specced laptop or on a phone, as all the processing to make the GIF is done in the cloud rather than on your machine. With these options you can make quick and fun GIFs from YouTube videos in just a few minutes.
Use GIFs.com for great customization
Step 1: Find the YouTube video that you want to turn into a GIF (perhaps a NASA archive?) and copy its URL.

Social Media

I paid Meta to ‘verify’ me — here’s what actually happened

In the fall of 2023 I decided to do a little experiment in the height of the “blue check” hysteria. Twitter had shifted from verifying accounts based (more or less) on merit or importance and instead would let users pay for a blue checkmark. That obviously went (and still goes) badly. Meanwhile, Meta opened its own verification service earlier in the year, called Meta Verified.

Mostly aimed at “creators,” Meta Verified costs $15 a month and helps you “establish your account authenticity and help[s] your community know it’s the real us with a verified badge." It also gives you “proactive account protection” to help fight impersonation by (in part) requiring you to use two-factor authentication. You’ll also get direct account support “from a real person,” and exclusive features like stickers and stars.