While millions of Americans were closely monitoring Hurricane Irene over the weekend, it was other news that created quite a storm Sunday evening.
MTV Video Music Awards
The 28th Annual MTV Video Music Awards (VMA) took place at the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles on August 28, 2011. While the star-studded event included live performances and unusual fashion statements, the biggest headline of the VMAs came from an unusually private superstar, Beyonce Knowles.
Beyonce Knowles Makes History
Prior to the show, Knowles told reporters on the black carpet, she had a “surprise.” When the singer hit the stage, she asked the audience to stand up and “feel the love that’s growing inside me.” And at the end of her live “Love on Top” performance, the beautiful 29-year-old singer unbuttoned her sequined jacket and revealed a belly bump to the roaring crowd. Back stage, proud husband and rapper Jay-Z, was seen getting huge congrats from fellow musician Kanye West. This will be the first child for the couple.
MTV even took to Twitter to report the surprising news, “OMG Beyonce just made a huge announcement on the #vma carpet.#baby!!!”
Twitter Milestones
While Hurricane Irene received about 3,000 tweets per second (tps) on Saturday, Beyonce’s pregnancy announcement broke all previous site records. Twitter confirmed the news by tweeting the info, "Last night at 10:35pm ET, Beyonce's big MTV #VMA moment gave Twitter a record bump: 8,868 Tweets per second." The news is officially the biggest event on Twitter – breaking the former winner, the Women’s World Cup at 7, 196 tweets per second and the news of Osama Bin Laden’s death at 5,106 tps.
In case you were wondering if Twitter is a passing fad, think again. With more than 200 million users and 1 million registered Twitter apps, Twitter has grown significantly since the site launched five years ago. In January 2009, approximately 2 million tweets were sent per day. Today, Twitter users send about 200 million tweets per day.
Twitter Topics
Users tweet about anything and everything including the weather. While people send about 200 weather-related tweets per minute, tweets double when weather turns nasty. According to Twitter, the Top 5 Pop Culture Trending Topics for the first half of 2011 are:
- Rebecca Black
- Femme Fatale
- Charlie Sheen
- #Tigerblood
- Nate Dogg
The Top 5 World Events/News during the first half of 2011 are:
- AH1N1 – Swine Flu
- Mubarak
- Easter
- Cairo
- #Pray for Japan
While social media plays a pivotal role in disseminating breaking news to the masses, it is interesting to note that a surprise pregnancy announcement from a very private couple, far surpassed previous Twitter records.
Source:
CNET. Reisinger, Don. “Beyonce pregnancy spurs tweets-per-second record.”
Jace Shoemaker-Galloway - +JaceShoemaker-Galloway is more than passionate about online safety awareness. She has devoted and dedicated over five years to Internet ...
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