Top 10 most tweeted about events ever (so far)

Twitter July 18, 2011 3 Comments

Japan may have become the first Asian team to win the Women’s World Cup but that wasn’t the only achievement yesterday.

During the final, over 7,000 tweets per second (TPS) were posted on the site commenting on the game worldwide making it the most tweeted about event on Twitter at any specific time so far.

With over 200 million users and 350 billion tweets posted on the site daily, the potential for the world to comment and discuss current events separately or together is growing and moments like this are increasing.

So, since Twitter has recently celebrated its fifth anniversary, here are some of the most tweeted about and significant events to occur during Twitter’s lifetime so far.

(10) Michael Jackson’s death

Date: 25th June, 2009
TPS: 456

Having originally set the record for most TPS back in 2009, comparing it to the other entries on this list will only show how explosive Twitter growth has been since then. At the time, over 12 million tweets were being sent per day during July 2009 and while there would be many moments that would boast a greater number of TPS than this, this was the first significant event for users to tweet about it in mass.

(9) NBA finals – Los Angeles Lakers Vs Boston Celtics

Date: 17th June 2010
TPS: 3,085

The final game of a best-of-seven series, the LA Lakers won the 2010 NBA championship by beating the Boston Celtics 83-70 and winning the series 4-3 overall. Going behind 40-34 at halftime, the Lakers levelled the game at 64 with six minutes remaining in the fourth quarter before. The title was their fifth in eleven seasons and their sixteenth overall.

(8) World Cup 2010 – Japan Vs Denmark

Date: 24th June 2010
TPS: 3,283

Shortly after the LA Lakers won their championship title, their record was broken again by the World Cup, Amazingly, the topic wasn’t about complaints about the vuvuzelas constantly droning throughout each game but instead focused on Japan’s final group game against Denmark. Japan only needed a draw to progress to the knockout stages while Denmark needed to win.

The end result was Japan sweeping Denmark aside in a 3-1 win, allowing them to finish second in their group and progress to the second round. The final came closest in matching this record with 3,051 TPS, sparked by Spain’s winning goal.

Also the video allows you the opportunity to relive memories of that game, and featuring the familiar sound of vuvuzelas in case you missed them.

(7) Osama Bin Laden’s death

Date: 2nd May 2011
TPS: 3,440

It’s only been two months ago since the leader of al-Qaida and the world’s most sought after terrorist after being responsible for 9/11 was killed by a US operation. The news was greeted with joy by most Americans yet further twitter activity came from FOX news which reported that ‘Obama Bin Laden’ was killed, not noticing their mistake until much later. Their website didn’t fare much better, having spelt Osama ‘Usama’ for a brief period.

(6) The Royal Wedding

Date: 29th April 2011
TPS: 3,966

In front of 1,900 guests in Westminster Abbey, Prince William and the now Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton, exchanged vows to complete one of the most covered media events so far this year. In Britain alone, over 24 million watched the ceremony alongside an international audience in the hundreds of millions.

(5) Super Bowl – Pittsburgh Steelers Vs Green Bay Packers

Date: 6th February 2011
TPS: 4,064

An audience of 111 million watched The Green Bay Packers defeat The Pittsburgh Steelers 31-25 in a packed Cowboys Stadium in Texas. The event was so that twitter decided to release a graph detailing the periods of mass tweeting, showing that tweeting peaked when the game ended.

Interestingly, the peak number before that was during the half time show when Usher started performing; feel free to draw your own conclusions.

(4) Japanese earthquake

Date: 11th March 2011
TPS: 5,530

Not all reasons for becoming a most trended event are positive with Japan being hit by an earthquake measuring 8.9 on the Richter scale, the sixth largest earthquake ever recorded. The earthquake caused mass power outages, fires and a tsunami which left many areas in Japan without power or, for a lot of coastal areas, completely devastated from the tsunami.

Almost immediately, millions of good will messages, reports, prayers were tweeted during the disaster becoming the first stop for reporting and distributing information to those in the affected areas.

(3) New Year’s Day 2011

Date: 1st January 2011
TPS: 6,939

Just four seconds after midnight in Japan, New Year’s Day was celebrated by breaking the record for the most number of Tweets sent per second.

Thanks to a 127 million population, the Japanese mobile networks tend to crash under the strain of people wishing friends and family “Akemashite omedetou gozaimasu” (Happy New Year). Twitter was used as a way of avoiding this problem and getting the message across which subsequently lead to a massive increase of tweets.

The video below shows the activity on twitter occurring during New Year’s Day starting with Japan before moving across to Europe and finishing at America

(2) Copa America 2011 – Paraguay Vs Brazil

Date: 17th July 2011
TPS: 7,166

Just narrowly missing out on the top spot was the Copa América quarter-final clash which saw Paraguay defeat Brazil 2-0 in penalties. After a goalless match, Brazil missed all four of their penalties while Paraguay only needed to convert two of their three attempts to book their place in Wednesday’s semi-final against Venezuela.

(1) Women’s World Cup Final 2011

Date: 17th July 2011
TPS: 7,196

Twitter announced yesterday that over 7,196 tweets were sent (TPS) per second during the final which saw Japan defeat USA 3-2 in penalties in a thrilling final.

USA were the first to go ahead after Alex Morgan scored in the 69th minute before to bring the game to extra time. USA took the lead again in the 104th minute yet three minutes USA missed their first three attempts where Japan sealed the title after Saki Kumagai slotted her penalty past the USA goalkeeper, Hope Solo.

Unsurprisingly, it was Japan that mostly contributed towards breaking this record.

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