Tweets peak at 110K a minute during Debate. Or was it 108K?
The second debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney generated 7.2 million tweets, down substantially from 10.3 million during the first showdown between the two presidential candidates.
Although there were no Big Bird or JFK moments during tonight's second showdown between President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Twitter users still sent more than 7.2 million tweets during the debate, peaking at either 110,000 per minute or 108,000 per minute, depending on which official tweet you believe.
And there was, of course, at least one popular new meme and the resulting Twitter account, @RomneysBinder.
According to Twitter, there were just more than 7.2 million tweets sent during the debate, down substantially from 10.3 million tweets sent during the first presidential debate on October 3, but far more than the 3.5 million tweets generated during last week's vice-presidential debate between Joe Biden and his counterpart, Paul Ryan. The drop in tweets from the first presidential debate could be a reflection that fewer people watched tonight's face-off than the previous one, or that there were fewer moments worth mentioning. Then again, it could be that some people were distracted by a Major League Baseball playoff game -- featuring the New York Yankees, no less -- that was being played at the same time as Obama and Romney were going toe-to-toe.
2nd #debates peak at 108k TPM came after @barackobama: "you're the last person to get tough on China."
-- Twitter Government (@gov) October 17, 2012
In an initial post-debate tweet, Twitter's @gov account posted that "conversation tonight peaked at 109,560 tweets per minute on the immigration question to @MittRomney and his answer."
But a few minutes later, @gov tweeted that "peak at [108,000 tweets per minute] came after @barackobama: "You're the last person to get tough on China."