The BlogtechnologyMitt RomneySocial Media

WATCH: 60 Seconds of Social Media

The first 2012 presidential debate was the most Tweeted-about event in U.S. politics history. And what were we Tweeting about? Big Bird, largely.
By 

blues preacher | content junkie | doughnut lover

blues preacher | content junkie | doughnut lover
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.
FILE - Big Bird, of the children's television show Sesame Street, arrives at the Daytime Emmy Awards on in this Aug. 30, 2009 file photo, in Los Angeles. In a week when Big Bird was in the news, it seemed fitting to find him perched at the parody news report Saturday Oct. 6, 2012 on NBC's "Saturday Night Live." (AP Photo/Matt Sayles, File)
FILE - Big Bird, of the children's television show Sesame Street, arrives at the Daytime Emmy Awards on in this Aug. 30, 2009 file photo, in Los Angeles. In a week when Big Bird was in the news, it seemed fitting to find him perched at the parody news report Saturday Oct. 6, 2012 on NBC's "Saturday Night Live." (AP Photo/Matt Sayles, File)

The first 2012 presidential debate was the most Tweeted-about event in U.S. politics history. And what were we Tweeting about?

Big Bird, largely. When Mitt Romney said he loved Big Bird but would cut spending for PBS if elected, there were 17,000 Big Bird Tweets per minute. According to CNN, Big Bird mentions spiked 800,000% on Facebook. It spawned parody Twitter accounts and Facebook pages. And that's just a sample of the waves of online content inspired by the debate, which also included scores of animated gifs created in real time by the folks at Tumblr.

Take a look at how the debate lit up social media in the latest episode of Freshwire's "60 Seconds of Social Media" below.

You can catch last week's episode about hashtags gone rogue right here.

Related

technologyMitt RomneySocial Mediapresidential debateDebate
|
Submit a tip

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot