Twitter Celebrating With A New Tweet Record

Twitter is celebrating a new year with a new Tweet record. Just four seconds after midnight in Japan on January 1st, Twitterers set a new record for an all-time record in the number of Tweets sent per second. The world sent a mind blowing 6,939 Tweets per second, wishing friends and followers a happy new year.

On the Japanese New Year, Oshogatsu, Japan shuts down everything as people spend the day with loved ones. The tradition is to call their friends and connect with them to celebrate. Japan’s mobile networks have been known to crash with the over 127 million people calling their loved ones. Many people on New Year’s Eve chose to use Twitter to celebrate and break the record.

The broken record was nearly doubled, with the previous record at 3,283 Tweets per second, when Japan won over Denmark in last summer’s World Cup. According to Twitter’s press release about this event, Japan broke the record more than 68 separate times within a 3-minute period.

Japan was not alone on New Year’s Eve, there was a very significant spike in the world Tweet activity as each time zone welcomed 2011. The east coast of the United States 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 did this last summer.

The video below visualizes New Year’s Eve Tweet data across the world. The circles get bigger as more Tweets are being sent at that moment. Notice that the circle over Tokyo gets so big it nearly swallows Japan.