World Cup Twitter Record - So What?
On Sunday, during the dramatic end to the women’s world cup final in Germany, as Japan tied with the U.S. with three minutes remaining and went on to win on penalties, an all-time Twitter record of 7,196 tweets per second (TPS) was set. This moment surpassed the previous record, set on New Years Eve in Japan in 2010, which hit 6,939 TPS, the earthquake and tsunami which hit Japan in March (5,530 TPS), the death of Osama bin laden (5,106 TPS), the 2011 Super Bowl (4,064 TPS) and the Royal Wedding in April (3,966 TPS).
The record-breaking numbers on Sunday, of course, reflect a rise in Twitter usage. Currently, Twitter users send 200 million tweets per day, compared to 10 million two years ago. What’s more, 600,000 new users are signing up daily. We should all expect upcoming noteworthy events are clearly going to lead to a greater number of tweets as well as new record breakers, but what else can we take away from this?
While the record is arbitrary and will most certainly be broken sooner than later, it is a small indication that there are more ways to judge the worthiness of cultural events beyond the traditional measuring sticks like television ratings. In the past, television ratings were always the single barometer for measuring the significance and popularity of current events. All the common-man chatter and hype that was built up around big events happened strictly in private conversations. Today, people have their entertainment attention divided, the individual has the power to choose how and when they consume their entertainment and events, and everyone has a voice that is very public and available worldwide in real-time. Decidedly, tweets-per-second isn’t a perfect gage for establishing cultural significance, and it is not going to take the place of TV ratings altogether, but it is like seeing the water cooler chatter on a worldwide level as it happens, not just what our personal friends and colleagues think. I predict, pretty soon, we will be inventing all sorts of new metrics, outside of TV ratings, to determine social impact and status.
