SAN FRANCISCO: Spain’s victory in the Euro 2012 football final sparked a new sports-related record for tweets per second, Twitter said.
Sunday’s final match resulted in 16.5 million tweets from fans around the world and total global traffic on the platform peaked at 15,358 tweets per second during the fourth goal, a new sports-related record on Twitter, the company said.
The surge in tweets came just weeks before the Olympics Games in London are expected to bring another unprecedented surge of activity by sports fans on social networking sites.
Spain defeated Italy in the final 4-0.
Among those who tweeted was Pele, the retired Brazilian star. He congratulated Spain and said he was looking forward to the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.
Twitter’s Andrew Fitzgerald said the company’s data charts showed how people followed the tournament on a moment-by-moment basis.
“You can see how often all of the teams were mentioned throughout the tournament and look at how mentions compare for competitors for each match,” he said.
“These different perspectives should give you a strong sense of how people reacted during the matches on Twitter. Look, for example, at the big spikes in tweets that tend to occur during goals.”
Twitter, which allows its members to post brief comments, links or pictures, claims to have more than 140 million active users, with the largest number being in the United States.
A recent survey found one in seven Americans who goes online uses Twitter and eight percent do so every day.
Euro 2012 final sparks record number of tweets
