Twitter sets record as Japan rang in New Year

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TOKYO: A flood of Japanese Tweets sent as the New Year arrived in Tokyo boosted global traffic within the network to a record 6,939 tweets per second (TPS), the microblogging site has reported.

The figure more than doubles the previous record of 3,283 TPS, set during Japan’s surprise victory over Denmark in last summer’s World Cup in South Africa, it said.

"Just four seconds after midnight in Japan on January 1st, Twitterers set an all-time record in the number of Tweets sent per second," Twitter said in a blog posted Thursday.

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

Twitter said that in Japan, with a population of over 127 million, "mobile networks have been known to crash under the strain of this collective cheer. This year, on New Year’s Eve, many people turned to Twitter to celebrate."

Twitter said that on New Year’s Eve, "we saw epic Tweet activity around the world as people in each time zone inaugurated 2011".

In the United States, "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."

Created in 2006 to exchange messages of no more than 140 characters, Twitter had 175 million registered users as of November 1 and transmitted 25 billion "Tweets" last year. About 95 million messages a day are sent over the site.