TMCnet Feature

Twitter (News - Alert) has become one of the more popular ways to “get your social network on,” thanks in large part to the fact that you can get an update out there quickly. While some people find the 140-character limit a bit bothersome, others find it easier to expedite their statuses. Because of this original way of social networking, more and more people are starting to adopt Twitter.

Just today, the United Kingdom's Supreme Court decided that it wants to join the “Twittersphere.” While more organizations like this are joining every day, the vast majority of tweets are still centered around sports and entertainment. That is probably one of the reasons that one of the all-time kings of Twitter is Tim Tebow. His heroics in the AFC divisional playoffs against the Pittsburgh Steelers set records for the number of mentions on Twitter. And now, yesterday’s Super Bowl shattered the record for the most-tweeted-about sporting event with 12,233 tweets per second that were fired off at the end of the game.

Not only did this amount of tweets break the record for sporting events, but it blasted past the event that held the top spot prior to yesterday. Before Super Bowl XLVI, the top Twitter sporting event was when the Japanese women's soccer team beat the U.S. team in the World Cup final last July. That tweet rate looks miniscule in comparison, weighing in with just 7,196 tweets per second. 

The SuperBowl also eclipsed Tebow's tweeting rate, which had stood as the second most tweeted item with over 9,000 tweets per second. The record held for most tweets per second in the entire Twittersphere might not be something most people would expect. The Japanese screening of Hayao Miyazaki's "Castle in the Sky” hit a mark that won't be beat anytime soon. That anime movie racked up a mind-boggling 25,088 tweets per second back in December. 

What is interesting is that the newest records in tweeting have all happened in the last few months. That seems to illustrate that not only is Twitter only growing in popularity, but that users are starting to see the benefits of the service on a much larger scale.