Twitterdid not crash and the Super Bowl became the most tweeted sporting event in history, averaging more than 10,000 tweets per second.
That wasn’t all that surprising: continued growth of the social network, not to mention tablet and smartphone technology that make it easier to tweet while watching television, means that record will probably be broken several times between now and next year’s Super Bowl.
What was surprising, however, is how many of the tweets had nothing to do with the game: we have only anecdotal evidence so far, but many of the most popular tweets dealt with commercials. This year also marked the year of the hash tag; where as last year’s Super Bowl ads urged consumers to “Follow us on Twitter and Facebook,” this year’s ads simply listed a hashtag like #GameDayPolarBears (Coca-Cola) and #thatsalotofpizza (Pizza Hut).
Industry trade journal AdAge essentially live-tweeted the game on its Twitter account, making comments and adding insight into each commercial. USA Today partnered with Facebook to create an admeter that allowed fans to rate and immediately share their favorite ads with friends.
The game did prove that some brands still have something to learn about using social media as a marketing tool. Toyota undercut an otherwise brilliant, dog-centric advertising campaign by effectively spamming any user that used a game-related hash tag, such as #Giants and #Patriots. With multiple verified accounts centered around the @CamryEffect tag line, almost every user who posted on a game-related hash tag got an offer to enter a contest to win a Camry.
For the record, commercials did not dominate the most tweeted parts of the broadcast. The most tweeted moment of the night, according to Twitter, was the end, when a Tom Brady Hail Mary pass failed to find a receiver and 12,233 people tweeted in a single second. The second most tweeted moment came during Madonna’s halftime show, which averaged more than 8,000 tweets per second and had a high of 10,245 tweets in a single second.
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