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2.5 million tweets an hour as news of Whitney Houston’s death spreads
UPDATE 2: The news was first broken in an even earlier tweet, at 4.15 pm, by @ajadiornavy, a relative of a hotel worker who reportedly found Whitney Houston: ”omgg , my aunt tiffany who work for whitney houston just found whitney houston dead in the tub . such ashame & sad 
“. This tweet was in Topsy’s index, but we didn’t notice it at first – we stopped looking further when we found the other tweets that broke the story before AP. Original blog post below…
News of singer Whitney Houston’s death spread like wildfire on Twitter since the news broke with a tweet from Associated Press at 4.57 pm. AP’s tweet was retweeted over 10,000 times, as you can see on Topsy’s trackback page for the tweet. UPDATE: Using Topsy tools, we found that the story was broken on Twitter 27 minutes before AP by @chilemasgrande in this tweet: “My sources say Whitney Houston found dead in Beverly hills hotel.. Not in the news yet!!“. As of this update, this tweet had only been retweeted once. A case of a Twitter user breaking news before the press, caught in action! Original blog post continues below…
The first full hour after the news broke saw 2,481,652 tweets and retweets, peaking at 61,227 tweets at 5.23 pm (all times are PST). That is over a thousand tweets a second, not quite as much as during the Superbowl but still a lot.
The most retweeted article after the news broke was from MSNBC, with 13 thousand tweets linking to it. Friends, musicians and celebrities tweeted out their condolences, each of them getting retweeted thousands of times: Rapper Lil Wayne has the record, with over 29,000 retweets as of the time of writing this post. Others who were widely retweeted include: Justin Bieber (15,000), Nicki Minaj (8,739), Katy Perry (8,394), Mariah Carey (6,305) and Christina Aguillera (4,321).
Hundreds of thousands of people mourned her passing away, posting to Twitter links to over 3,000 video recordings of Whitney Houston’s songs.
At Topsy, we have built the world’s largest and most powerful search and analytics platform for social media, allowing our users to monitor and track breaking events and emerging trends on the public consumer website Topsy.com, as well as through commercial offerings. As more events unfold on social media, we believe that Topsy will be an increasingly valuable way to rapidly gain insights into what is going on.
February 12th, 2012 at 5:14 pm
[...] death by citing her publicist was retweeted more than 10,000 times, according to data from Topsy Labs. However, the first tweet to reveal the news was sent at 4:30 p.m. PT and was only retweeted once. [...]
February 12th, 2012 at 5:26 pm
[...] 2.5 million tweets an hour as news of Whitney Houston’s death spreads (topsy labs) [...]
February 12th, 2012 at 6:07 pm
[...] death by citing her publicist was retweeted more than 10,000 times, according to data from Topsy Labs. However, the first tweet to reveal the news was sent at 4:30 p.m. PT and was only retweeted [...]
February 12th, 2012 at 6:07 pm
[...] death by citing her publicist was retweeted more than 10,000 times, according to data from Topsy Labs. However, the first tweet to reveal the news was sent at 4:30 p.m. PT and was only retweeted once. [...]
February 12th, 2012 at 6:10 pm
[...] death by citing her publicist was retweeted more than 10,000 times, according to data from Topsy Labs. However, the first tweet to reveal the news was sent at 4:30 p.m. PT and was only retweeted once. [...]
February 12th, 2012 at 6:19 pm
[...] death by citing her publicist was retweeted more than 10,000 times, according to data from Topsy Labs. However, the first tweet to reveal the news was sent at 4:30 p.m. PT and was only retweeted once. [...]
February 13th, 2012 at 6:33 am
[...] Houstons death by citing her publicist was retweeted more than 10,000 times, according to data fromTopsy Labs. BREAKING: Publicist Kristen Foster says singer Whitney Houston has died at age [...]
February 13th, 2012 at 9:43 am
[...] Houston’s death by citing her publicist was retweeted over 10,000 times, according to data from Topsy Labs. However, the first tweet to reveal the news was only retweeted once. “My sources say Whitney [...]
February 13th, 2012 at 11:44 am
[...] A tweet from the Associated Press that confirmed Houston’s death by citing her publicist was retweeted over 10,000 times, according to data from Topsy Labs. [...]
February 13th, 2012 at 2:46 pm
[...] engine, dug into the twittersphere to find the first tweet to indicate that Houston was dead. In a post not attributed to a specific author, the site initially said the first tweet about it came at 4:30 p.m. PST, from Big Chorizo [...]
February 13th, 2012 at 3:25 pm
[...] “Hundreds of thousands of people mourned her passing away, posting to Twitter links to over 3,000 video recordings of Whitney Houston’s songs,” according to Topsy Labs [...]
February 13th, 2012 at 3:43 pm
[...] when it comes to the breaking story of the weekend, TopsyLabs has some interesting information. It appears that the AP was scooped by about 45 minutes regarding the death of pop star Whitney [...]
February 13th, 2012 at 4:40 pm
[...] quickly the news… about Whitney Houston’s death spread are absolutely mind boggling! Topsy Labs reports that about 2.5 billion tweets and re-tweets occurred in the first hour, amounting to about [...]
February 13th, 2012 at 5:38 pm
[...] of the most recent examples, the news of singer Whitney Houston’s death at the age of 48 was broadcast far and wide via Twitter and Facebook long before it showed up on most mainstream media ou…. Not only that, but what seemed to be one of the first reports about her death — posted about [...]
February 13th, 2012 at 7:49 pm
[...] by citing her publicist was retweeted some-more than 10,000 times, according to information from Topsy Labs. However, a first tweet to exhibit a news was sent during 4:30 p.m. PT and was usually retweeted [...]
February 13th, 2012 at 8:51 pm
[...] Ce tweet ne fut “retweeté” (rediffusé à ses abonnés par un autre utilisateur de Twitter) qu’une fois alors que le premier tweet d’un grand média – en l’occurrence The Associated Press – confirmant la disparition de la chanteuse à partir d’une source officielle fut retweeté, lui, plus de 10 000 fois selon la société d’études Topsy Labs. [...]
February 13th, 2012 at 9:01 pm
[...] la información que reveló en un principio el sitio Topsy Labs, el twit original que esparció la noticia sobre la trágica e inesperada muerte de esta cantante [...]
February 13th, 2012 at 9:57 pm
[...] la firme Topsy Labs, la nouvelle de la mort de la chanteuse a généré une moyenne de 2,5 millions de messages à [...]
February 14th, 2012 at 1:37 am
[...] to data from Topsy Labs, the first full hour after the news broke saw almost 2.5 million tweets and retweets, peaking at [...]
February 14th, 2012 at 3:01 am
[...] of the most recent examples, the news of singer Whitney Houston’s death at the age of 48 was broadcast far and wide via Twitter and Facebook long before it showed up on most mainstream media ou…. Not only that, but what seemed to be one of the first reports about her death — posted about [...]
February 14th, 2012 at 3:23 am
[...] of the most recent examples, the news of singer Whitney Houston’s death at the age of 48 was broadcast far and wide via Twitter and Facebook long before it showed up on most mainstream media ou…. Not only that, but what seemed to be one of the first reports about her death — posted about [...]
February 14th, 2012 at 4:05 am
[...] titled “Socializing the News.” You can watch a live webcast here starting at 12:15pm ET. Topsy Media reported: “2.5 million tweets an hour…with link accolades going to MSNBC for the most retweeted article [...]
February 14th, 2012 at 6:02 am
[...] death by citing her publicist was retweeted more than 10,000 times, according to data from Topsy Labs. However, the first tweet to reveal the news was sent at 4:30 p.m. PT and was only retweeted once. [...]
February 14th, 2012 at 11:58 am
[...] Houston 27 minutos antes da imprensa e muita gente se vangloriou disso. Foram totalizados mais de 2.5 milhões de tweets por hora com menções a cantora. Mas será que isso significa alguma [...]
February 16th, 2012 at 3:44 pm
[...] Topsy Labs reports there were 2.5 million tweets an hour as news of the singer’s death spread around the globe – that’s over a thousand tweets a second – could that be quicker than the speed of light? Either way, talk about a powerful and fast way of spreading your message – whether you want to spread it or not. [...]
February 16th, 2012 at 5:34 pm
[...] http://topsylabs.com/2012/02/12/2-5-million-tweets-an-hour-as-news-of-whitney-houstons-death-spreads… [...]
February 17th, 2012 at 6:18 pm
[...] engine, dug into the twittersphere to find the first tweet to indicate that Houston was dead. In a post not attributed to a specific author, the site initially said the first tweet about it came at 4:30 p.m. PST, from Big Chorizo [...]
February 19th, 2012 at 7:19 am
[...] week after 2.5 million tweets per second spread across the internet in the hours following Whitney Houston’s death, the pop [...]
February 19th, 2012 at 2:59 pm
[...] passing of Whitney Houston was broken on Twitter, rather than a conventional media source and it gathered momentum as the news spread like wildfire; there were 2.5 million Tweets within the first hour of the news story= over 1k/second. As seen in [...]
February 26th, 2012 at 1:41 pm
[...] one of the most recent examples, the news of singer Whitney Houston’s death at the age of 48 was broadcast far and wide via Twitter and Facebook long before it showed up on most mainstream media ou…. Not only that, but what seemed to be one of the first reports about her death — posted about an [...]
February 27th, 2012 at 8:26 pm
[...] almost 2.5 million times in the first hour after her death according to data tracking company Topsy Labs. The sheer volume of data re-transmission is a testament to both the real time reporting [...]