Well, that didn’t take long. Just four seconds after midnight in Japan on January 1st, Twitterers set an all-time record in the number of Tweets sent per second (TPS). At that moment, the world sent a staggering 6,939 TPS wishing friends and followers a fond “Akemashite omedetou gozaimasu” (“Happy New Year!”).
On Oshogatsu (Japanese New Year), Japan virtually shuts down as people spend the day with family and the people with whom they are closest. People make it a point to call their friends and connect with everyone they know to celebrate. With a population of over 127 million, Japanese mobile networks have been known to crash under the strain of this collective cheer. This year, on New Year’s Eve, many people turned to Twitter to celebrate.
The new record more than doubles the previous one of 3,283 TPS, set during Japan’s victory over Denmark in last summer’s World Cup. In fact, on New Year’s Eve, that all-time TPS record was shattered more than 68 separate times within a single 3-minute period.
Japan wasn’t alone. On New Year’s Eve, we saw epic Tweet activity around the world as people in each time zone inaugurated 2011. The East coast time zone alone almost amassed the same amount of Tweets at its peak of 3,000 TPS as the entire world did during the peak moment of the World Cup.>> Read More
