Twitter welcomes in 2013 with record breaking number of tweets posted per second #infographic

As the fireworks exploded for New Year’s Day, so too did Twitter’s record for the greatest number of tweets posted per second. Twitter users from Tokyo to Seoul were the most active in wishing users a Happy New Year, according to Twitter’s analysis of this year’s New Year’s tweets.

Twitter reports that users in Asia posted more “Happy New Year” tweets per second than any other time zone in the world.  Some nine hours before London welcomed in 2013 they posted over 33,388 tweets per second, that’s two and a half times more than the second more active time zone (New York to Bogota).

Twitter says this was one of the most celebrated New Years on the site,

“Last night millions of people rang in 2013 by tweeting messages as midnight arrived in every time zone. From Tokyo to San Francisco, the spikes in Tweets per second reveal when and where people celebrated”

Twitter also released this infographic showing tweet peaks during specific time zones as the clock struck midnight on the New Year.

While Twitter hasn’t said so itself, Tokyo to Seoul’s tweets per second (TPS) rate of 33,388 would make it one of biggest TPS rates yet recorded.  This is higher than the previous record set by Japanese series Castle in the Sky, which managed 25,088 tweets per second in December 2011.

We know that in January 2011 the term “New Years” recorded the greatest number of Tweets per second of that month, with just 6,939 TPS.  But that wasn’t the highest number of TPS that year: that honour went to the MTV Video Music Awards, which set the then record at just 8,868 TPS.

But 2012 wasn’t without its own records; the first record was sent on February 6 2012, then Twitter reported that 12,233 tweets per second were posted in the final minutes of Super Bowl XLVI.  This was then broken five months later when, during the Euro 2012 finals, the TPS record was set at 15,358.

In its annual review of 2012, Twitter reported its highest tweet rates in tweets per minutes not tweets per second, so we can’t make a direct comparison with those figures.  But we do know that President Obama’s “Four more year” tweet from November 6 2012 is the site’s record holder.  Not only is it the most retweeted tweet ever but it also helped Obama set Twitter’s record for the greatest number of tweets per minute, at 327,000 TPM.

Who knows if we’ll have to wait another year before the TPS rate is broken again.