Bin Laden Announcement Has Highest Sustained Tweet Rate Ever, At 3440 Tweets Per Second

Twitter has just revised its preliminary measurements of 4,000 tweets per second from last night’s announcement of Osama Bin Laden’s death, tweeting out the new measurements below. At the event’s peak (11pm EST) there were 5,106 TPS, beating out Super Bowl 2011 (with 4,064 TPS) but not NYE 2010 (with 6,939 TPS).

The event had the highest sustained rate of tweets ever according to Twitter, reaching 3,000 tweets per second between 10:45 and 2:20am, raking in 38,7 million tweets in 3 hours and 35 minutes. At its peak it averaged 3440 TPS from 10:45pm  to 12:30pm EST, at an average of 12,4 million tweets an hour. For comparison, this year’s Super Bowl had sustained 20 minutes at 3,000 TPS.

From Twitter PR:

“Last night saw the highest sustained rate of Tweets ever. From 10:45 – 2:20am ET, there was an average of 3,000 Tweets per second. At 11p.m. ET, there were 5,106 Tweets per second. At 11:45p.m. ET, when Pres. Obama finished his remarks, there were 5,008 TPS. Note: The TPS numbers we reported last night were incomplete”

The timeline of the event on Twitter was as follows: At 1:00pm EST last night, Sohaib Athar (@reallyvirtual) unknowingly liveblogged the helicopter raids that eventually killed Bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan. At around 9:45pm EST White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer notified the press corps that Obama would make an impromptu announcement at 10:30 EST, then tweeted out the same information to his followers.

At 10:25pm former Donald Rumsfeld Chief Of Staff Keith Urbahn tweeted, “So I’m told by a reputable person they have killed Osama Bin Laden. Hot damn.” ABC, NBC and CBS then followed suit, announcing the death of Bin Laden on television at 10:45pm EST. Obama’s speech began at 11:30pm EST and by 11:35 EST the President had confirmed Osama’s death. At 11:45pm EST the announcement was over.

For perspective, here is a list of other notable TPS event records:

* The all-time record is still NYE 2010 in Japan, with 6,939 TPS at its peak

* On the day of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami (On March 11th) Twitter usage reached 5,530 TPS. (Passing the 5,000 TPS mark five times that day).

* The 2011 Super Bowl reached 4,064 TPS

* Japan’s victory over Denmark in the World Cup reached 3,283 TPS

* Final game of the 2010 NBA finals peaked at 3,085 TPS

* Last Friday’s Royal Wedding reached a peak of 3,966 TPS at 4pm London time

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