Twitter Erupts Over Obama Gay Marriage Interview

Those who follow the social conversation on Twitter know that the site can go wild over the most mundane pieces of news; they also know that any true breaking news causes the social network to absolutely erupt. Yesterday was one of those days. Adweek first noticed the news a little before 9 a.m. EST, when New York Times media reporter Brian Stelter released one of his typical breaking news teases to his Twitter followers: Some interesting political TV news bubbling up this morning... — Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) May 9, 2012 However, the real scoop appears to have come from Times reporter Michael Barbaro, whose tweet came at 8:43 a.m.: I am told that Robin Roberts is likely to discuss same-sex marriage with President Obama today, who may clarify his position on the issue. — Michael Barbaro (@mikiebarb) May 9, 2012 From there the floodgates opened, as the ABC News interview with Robin Roberts and President Obama was confirmed for 1:30 p.m. Politicians weighed in from both sides of the aisle, which naturally helped add to the din and jumpstart futher discussion. If you're looking for that commentary, the Washington Post did a great job aggregating reactions from politicians here. In fewer than seven hours, President Obama's official gay marriage endorsement tweet was retweeted almost a mind-numbing 50,000 times, according to RetweetingObama. Twitter reports that there were more than 7,347 tweets per minute related to the Obama news after Reuters' Matthew Keys scooped an ABC URL leak. Twitter has provided a graph below. Yesterday capped off what has been a growing trend of gay marriage-related tweets as the conversation picked up around 2010 and has since been slowly intensifying. Twitter has also provided a chart to show how the cultural shifts have led to more gay marriage conversation on the social network. This is just more proof that we've moved into a social existence on the internet, where news is increasingly shared and discussed from multiple platforms anywhere, anytime. As a political issue, Obama's endorsement of same-sex marriage fit seamlessly into the conversation on Twitter as the social network spread the historic news.

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Twitter Erupts Over Obama Gay Marriage Interview

7,347 gay marriage-related tweets per minute at peak

Charlie Warzel

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Charlie Warzel