Tebow-Mania Hits Twitter: More Tweets-Per-Second Than Bin Laden, Steve Jobs & Beyoncé’s Pregnancy

Among the many miraculous things Tim Tebow has done, we can now add this: a record for the most sports-related tweets per second.

It happened yesterday during the NFL playoff game between Tebow’s Denver Broncos and the defending AFC champion Pittsburgh Steelers. Tebow’s legend has grown this season thanks to his leading the team on several miraculous late-game comebacks, coupled with the quarterback’s penchant to kneel down and openly pray on the sidelines during games. (A practice that’s now called Tebowing, which has also been officially recognized as a word in some quarters.)

Anyhoo, when Tebow threw an 80-yard touchdown pass on the first play of overtime yesterday to beat the Steelers, Twitter erupted at a rate of 9,420 tweets-per-second (TPS), which the company announced today was a new record for sports events:

Last night @TimTebow lead the @Denver_Broncos to an overtime playoff win and a new sports Tweets per second record: 9420

— Twitter (@twitter) January 9, 2012

That shattered the previous sports record, which was 7,196 TPS at the end of the FIFA Women’s World Cup last summer. It’s also more than these major, non-sports news events:

• Osama bin Laden’s death: 5,106 TPS
• Steve Jobs’ resignation from Apple (7,064 TPS) and death (6,049 TPS)
• U.S. East Coast earthquake (August 23, 2011): 5,449 TPS
• 2011 MTV Video Music Awards (Beyoncé pregnant): 8,868 TPS
• 2011 Super Bowl: 4,064 TPS

But Tebow will probably have to reach this year’s Super Bowl, and may have to come up with another miraculous finish, if he hopes to beat the all-time record for TPS. That happened on December 9th when the Japanese TV screening of Hayao Miyazaki’s Castle in the Sky produced 25,088 tweets per second.

(Tim Tebow image courtesy Helga Esteb / Shutterstock.com. Used under license.)

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About The Author

Matt McGee

Matt McGee joined Third Door Media as a writer/reporter/editor in September 2008. He served as Editor-In-Chief from January 2013 until his departure in July 2017. He can be found on Twitter at @MattMcGee.