The final match between Japan and the United States at the FIFA Women’s World Cup in Frankfurt, Germany, set a new record for number of tweets sent per second on Sunday.
After the Japan women’s football team beat America in penalties, Twitter announced that the game scored a new record with 7,196 Tweets per second. The Paraguay vs. Brazil game in Copa América is the new number-two spot with 7,166 tweets per second.
In terms of past events, Super Bowl 2011 saw 4,064 TPS, and the all-time high was New Years Eve 2010 in Japan, which hit 6,939 TPS at its peak. On the day of the Japanese earthquake and Tsunami in March, Twitter usage reached 5,530 TPS.
“Congrats Japan,” “Japs” and “Pearl Harbor”
Besides the obvious #worldcupfinal hashtag, the game created some other trending topics on Twitter. “Congrats Japan” and some names from the U.S women’s team were trending, but regrettably so were a couple other unfortunate phrases like “Japs” and “Pearl Harbor,” as U.S. supporters made a rather distasteful jokes about another attack on the harbor had Japan lost the game.
While every country has its share of ignorant people, it is disappointing to see that there were enough American tweeters to drive such remarks to the trending topics list.
Elsewhere on Twitter, U.S. President Barack Obama joined in tweeting about the game:
While Obama was certainly disappointed with the outcome, it was nice to see his congratulations as well as those from other Americans.
