On Tuesday, Twitter told us that this year’s Republican National Convention had already produced more tweets that the entirety of the 2008 convention – and it hadn’t even gotten off the ground. When the 2012 convention smashed the 2008 convention in terms of tweets, there hadn’t even been a headlining speaker yet due to the delay for Hurricane Isaac.
If you want more proof that 2012 really is the first true social media election, here it is: Twitter has just announced that last night during Paul Ryan’s VP acceptance speech, the total tweets surrounding the convention topped 2 million.
That’s more the six times the total tweets from the 2008 convention.
Ryan’s speech also drew the top three spikes in tweets per minute last night, with the highest spike coming at the end. As Ryan closed his 30+ minutes speech, 6,669 tweets were sent out in 60 seconds.
That tops the previous TPM spike, which came at the end of Ann Romney’s speech Tuesday night. When Mitt Romney came out to give his wife a kiss, tweets per minute hit 6,195.
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also made Twitter buzz, logging 3,961 TPM at one point. That’s the most of any Wednesday speaker outside of Paul Ryan.