The first US presidential debate between President Barack Obama and his Republican rival Mitt Romney has become the most tweeted about event in the history of US politics.
According to the Twitter feed for @gov, which tracks the use of Twitter for civic engagement, the debate passed the number of tweets sent during the Rupublican and the Democrat National Committee.
The mention of ‘Big Bird’ by Romney led to 17,000 tweets being sent per minute, revealed @gov, while ‘PBS’ which airs Sesame Street led to 10,000 tweets per minute after he admitted that he planned to cut funding for the broadcaster.
Big Bird also became the fourth most searched term on Twitter as a result of Romney stating ‘I love Big Bird’.
The total number of tweets sent during all four debates in 2008 is said to have measured around 500,000, a number that was dwarfed before the first debate even began last night.
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