Fueled by speculation and anticipation, Sunday night’s rumors and commentary about Osama bin Laden’s death fueled the highest sustained rate of tweets ever. Twitter spokesperson Jodi Olson reports that between 10:45 p.m. and 12:30 a.m. EST there was an average of 3,440 tweets per second. Compare that to an average of 3,000 tweets per second during the highest traffic period of this year’s Super Bowl.
Sunday night, Twitter traffic reached its peak approximately 30 minutes after Keith Urbahn tweeted that bin Laden had been killed. At exactly 11 p.m. EST, there were 5,106 Tweets per second.
Last Friday’s Royal Wedding saw a peak of only 3,966 tweets per second at 4 p.m. London Time. The record for tweets per second remains midnight New Year’s Eve, 2011.
