An election victory tweet from President Barack Obama – “Four more years” with a picture of him hugging his wife – was the most retweeted ever, but the US election was topped by the Olympics as the most tweeted event this year.
Twitter users were busiest during the final vote count for the presidential elections, sending 327,452 tweets a minute on election night on their way to a tally of 31 million election tweets for the day.
The 2012 Olympic Games in London had the most overall tweets of any event, with 150 million sent over the 16 days.
Usain Bolt’s golden win in the 200m topped 80,000 tweets a minute but he did not achieve the highest Olympic peak on Twitter. That was seen during the closing ceremony when 115,000 tweets a minute were sent as the Spice Girls performed.
Syria, where a bloody civil war still plays out, was the most talked about country in 2012 but sports and pop culture dominated the tally of tweets.
News of pop star Whitney Houston’s death in February generated more than 10 million tweets, peaking at 73,662 a minute. – (Reuters)