Super Bowl(ful) of Tweets: Making Sense of 47,000+ Twitter-Sized Bites

Posted on February 8, 2010 by Sandi Saylor — 1 Comment

As the excitement of Super Bowl XLIV winds down, we thought it would be interesting to take a look at related Twitter conversation as reflected via the WE twendz pro^tm service. Specifically, we set out to see what trends and topics had everyone buzzing before, during and after the big game. Below are a few items that jumped out for us. But we’d also like to hear from you — what did you notice? Let us know in the comments!

Volume. Anticipation trumps the actual event?

At the time this post was written, there were over 47,500 tweets in the past 7 days, with the majority (nearly 31,700, or 67%) appearing prior to game day. Super Bowl Sunday saw just over 11,000 tweets, and while we’re still early in the post-Super Bowl hours, nearly 4,000 tweets had appeared as of 10 am (PST) Monday, February 8.

Velocity and Reach

Average VpH (velocity per hour) since February 1 was 265.7 tweets/hour. VpH spiked to an average 460.4 tweets/hour on game day. The Total Potential Reach on Super Bowl Sunday alone was 14,712,373.  (Potential reach = tweets x followers)

Frequently used hashtags

The NFL promoted #SB44 as its hashtag with great results — #SB44 was used in nearly 5,000 tweets over the past 7 days! #superbowl had 2,212 uses for the same timeframe, followed by #nfl (1,178). After the Saints’ win, #saints and #whodat both moved up in the rankings, overtaking #nfl mentions. Meanwhile, uses of the #colts hashtag dropped.

Celeb tweets were among the top retweeted

@mashable and @NFL were tops with respect to retweets (397 and 308, respectively), but celebrities also had a fair showing:

• Alyssa Milano (@alyssa_milano) congratulated New Orleans and noted that all the gear made in the event of a Colts victory would be donated to Haiti. In total, Milano’s tweets were retweeted 45 times.
• Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) was retweeted 77 times, with the ever-popular “What are u doing for superbowl? #sb44” RTed most frequently.
• Guy Kawasaki (@guykawasaki) tweeted a link from his Alltop perch about past Super Bowl stadiums: Super Bowl Stadiums from I to XLIV http://om.ly/euQF.

Top influencers

Not surprisingly, top influencers in the Super Bowl Twitter conversation included @NFL, @CNN and @Nightline. Other key influencers:

• @Zaibatsu: “just a guy who loves Social Media.”  Aka Reg Saddler from Denver.  99k followers.
• @_SEM: search marketing guy from Dusseldorf.  66k followers; 4 tweets.
• @mlomb: mobile apps developer from Argentina. 23k followers.
• @BrianTomkins:  from Chicago – just trying to make a difference with Social Media. 30k followers.

Interestingly, many of the most recent tweeters tend to be lower influence. Will this shift as higher-ranking influencers weigh in on the game or begin offering their take on the always popular Super Bowl ads?

Check out the twendz pro service Super Bowl dashboard for yourself.

Lucy Allison-Pursley contributed to this post.