Super Bowl XLIX was the biggest Super Bowl ever on Twitter, generating 28.4 million tweets, the company announced Monday.
While that sounds like a given, with the Internet's constant growth, it really wasn't: Last year's Super Bowl generated 24.9 million tweets, a slight increase from 2013, when 24.1 million tweets were recorded. In 2014, Twitter grew at a lesser rate than throughout 2013 -- slow enough to cause the company's stock to sharply drop after the earnings call in Oct. 2014 -- so Super Bowl being 14 percent bigger than last year's has got to feel good for Twitter.
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The biggest moments from Sunday's game were Malcolm Butler's interception of a pass by Russell Wilson with 20 seconds left, effectively winning the game for Patriots. At that moment, Twitter measured 395,000 tweets per minute, besting the actual ending of the game, which generated 379,000 tweets per minute.
PATRIOTS WIN!! Your New England Patriots are Super Bowl Champions! #FinishedTheJob pic.twitter.com/qJ3t7G20Cc— New England Patriots (@Patriots) February 2, 2015
Katy Perry's halftime performance was also a huge moment, generating 284,000 tweets per minute when it ended.
You are beyond perfect @katyperry #SuperBowlSunday pic.twitter.com/zAFCBGKcFL— Cam (@CamMansel) February 2, 2015
The most-mentioned Patriots players during the game were Tom Brady, Rob Gronkowski and Julian Edelman. On the Seahawks team, Marshawn Lynch, Russell Wilson and the unlikely star of the first half, rookie receiver Chris Matthews, got the most mentions.
Ladies and gentlemen, We present Chris Matthews.. He's really good at crazy TD catches. #SB49 http://t.co/OX6F3pzYII— NFL (@nfl) February 2, 2015
Check out more stats from the game at Twitter's official blog.