Women’s World Cup sets Twitter record

By Rick Marshall July 18, 2011

Sunday’s final match of the Women’s World Cup set a new record on Twitter, eclipsing the high tweets-per-second tallies of events such as the 2011 Super Bowl, the Royal Wedding, and the death of Osama Bin Laden.

According to Twitter, tweets were being sent at a rate of 7,196 messages per second during the match between the Japan and U.S. women’s soccer teams. A match between Paraguay and Brazil later in the day almost hit the same mark, but stopped short of breaking the tweets-per-second record set by the tense Women’s World Cup final.

“New Tweets per second records! End of the #WWC final: 7196 TPS. And today’s end to the Paraguay/Brazil game is now 2nd with 7166 TPS,” announced Twitter’s official account yesterday evening.

The previous record was set during the New Year’s Eve festivities in Japan, with users sending 6,939 tweets per second. Other high-water marks for the social media system included the day of bin Laden’s death, which found Twitter users voicing their 140-character thoughts on the news at a rate of 5,106 tweets per second. February’s match-up between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Green Bay Packers in Super Bowl XLV generated 4,064 tweets per second.

This weekend’s record-breaking use of Twitter continues to offer proof of the social media network’s popularity in Japan, as the previous record for World Cup tweeting was set last year when Japan beat Denmark in an early stage of the tournament. The 3,283 tweets-per-second sent during (and immediately after) the match was more than the number sent during the actual final of the World Cup.

Not bad for a service that turned five years old last week, eh?

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