David Cameron's post-Brexit departure sees Twitter usage double in the UK
Following the UK's decision to leave the EU on Friday (24 June) intense political debate and rolling news has been taking up Twitter timelines across the world.
David Cameron's resignation was the most tweeted about moment in the EU referendum
Data from the social network has revealed that over 6.4 million tweets were sent using the official #EUref hashtag between the polls opening on Thursday and 10am this morning. Excluding all other tweets omitting the hashtag, an average of 237,037 tweets were sent out per-hour during this time frame.
Unsurprisingly, conversation on the social network peaked when Prime Minister David Cameron made his resignation speech outside his Downing Street, generating 13,300 tweets each minute.
UK Twitter usage sat at double its normal level during the announcement, making the moment the most-tweeted about event since the #EUref campaign launched at the start of June.
The second most buzzworthy moment came at 4.44am this morning when ITN and the BBC declared the leave campaign victorious, which clocked up a total of 11,000 posts every 60-seconds on Twitter.
Twitter's head of news and government partnerships, Rob Owers noted in a blog post that from the outset the Leave campaign was the most talked about on the platform – consistently generating around 55 to 70 per cent of all conversation about the referendum. However, on polling day itself the Remain camp led the conversation.
Throughout the political push, Twitter's data revealed that the economy was by far the most discussed topic, placing well ahead of foreign relations, immigration or security.
Research from We Are Social released earlier this week correctly predicted a Leave vote based on the group's high-level of follower engagement.