If you watched the MTV Video Music Awards last night — and why wouldn’t you? — then you saw MTV’s big Twitter wall and online Twitter Tracker.
Working with Twitter and Stamen Design, MTV tracked the number of tweets that mentioned various people in the awards show in real time, displaying it in “bumps” scattered throughout the broadcast and continuously online. Approximately 2.3 million tweets were sent, and mentions of Lady Gaga (big surprise) peaked at 9,200 tweets per minute. For context, the broadcast averaged a record 11.4 million viewers, according to Nielsen numbers. That’s about 1 tweet for every 5 viewers (roughly, because viewers come and go), and you can bet it will be even more next year.
“MTV’s bleeding-edge integration fused the story of the audience’s real-time excitement into the story of the VMAs itself,” explained Twitter’s Chloe Sladden (@chloes). MTV says it expects the Twitter Tracker approach will by copied by other live awards shows soon.
During the World Cup, CNN tracked 11 million tweets, displaying them by team in its own online Twitter tracker that you can rewind to experience again.
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