TV Screening Of 1986 Japanese Anime Film Sets 25,088 Tweets Per Second Record, Says Twitter

Back in August, Beyoncé Knowles’ pregnancy announcement at the MTV Video Music Awards set a record on Twitter, with a very impressive 8,868 tweets per second (TPS).

And as part of their #YearInReview series, Twitter published a list of all the major events on Twitter in 2011, with the typical entry generating a mark of somewhere between five and seven thousand TPS.

Now, we have a new benchmark on Twitter. It happened in Japan, triggered an unbelievable 25,088 tweets per second, and took place during a television screening of an animated movie… from 1986.

Yep: something doesn’t add up. But, it’s official: Twitter broke the news of this new record late last night, via the @TwitterComms account.

On Dec 9, the television screening in Japan of Hayao Miyazaki’s “Castle in the Sky” led to 25,088 Tweets per second – a new Twitter record.

— Twitter Comms (@twittercomms) December 14, 2011

Castle In The Sky is a Japanese anime film that was released in 1986. Here’s the trailer:

The film is highly-rated and won some prestigious awards, but it’s twenty-five years old. So, why would a television screening of this film generate three times as many tweets as Twitter’s previous all-time record? It’s not the first time that Japan, where Twitter is wildly popular, has charged its way to the TPS record, but still… 25,088? For reals?

And if that mark is legitimate, what in blue blazes is it going to take to beat that score? Beyoncé’s having triplets? Definitive proof that Elvis, Jim Morrison and Tupac are still alive, and releasing a single together? The shocking news that vampires are very real and live amongst us… and Justin Bieber is their king?

Or… it might turn out to be a mistake. We’ll update if and when that happens.

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