SPAIN’S VICTORY IN the Euro 2012 football final sparked a new sports-related record for tweets per second, Twitter have said.

Sunday’s final match resulted in 16.5 million tweets from fans around the world and total global traffic on the platform peaked at 15,358 tweets per second during the fourth goal, a new sports-related record on Twitter, the company said.

Spain defeated Italy 4-0 in the final.

Twitter’s Andrew Fitzgerald said the company’s data charts showed how people followed the tournament on a moment-by-moment basis.

“You can see how often all of the teams were mentioned throughout the tournament and look at how mentions compare for competitors for each match,” he said.

“These different perspectives should give you a strong sense of how people reacted during the matches on Twitter. Look, for example, at the big spikes in tweets that tend to occur during goals.”

Twitter, which allows its members to post brief comments, links or pictures, claims to have more than 140 million active users, with the largest number being in the United States.

A recent survey found one in seven Americans who goes online uses Twitter and eight percent do so every day.

- © AFP, 2012

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