Japanese microbloggers break records with 'Happy New Year' tweets

(Twitter)

Twitter's existing tweets sent per second (TPS) record was broken just four seconds after midnight on January 1 as Japanese "Twitterers" fired off "Happy New Year" messages to their friends, family and followers.

"At that moment, the world sent a staggering 6,939 TPS wishing friends and followers a fond 'Akemashite omedetou gozaimasu' ('Happy New Year!')," announced Twitter in a January 6 blog post.

The record is more than double Twitter's previous record of 3,283 TPS, which was set during Japan's victory of Denmark in the 2010 World Cup.

"In fact, on New Year's Eve, that all-time [2010] TPS record was shattered more than 68 separate times within a single 3-minute period," said Twitter adding that "Japan wasn't alone" in sending large numbers of tweets on New Year's Eve.  

"On New Year's Eve, we saw epic Tweet activity around the world as people in each time zone inaugurated 2011. The East coast time zone alone almost amassed the same amount of Tweets at its peak of 3,000 TPS as the entire world did during the peak moment of the World Cup."

Twitter has posted a video that visualizes the rise in tweets on New Year's Eve around the globe. The video can be viewed here:

http://blog.twitter.com/2011/01/celebrating-new-year-with-new-tweet.html