Brit Awards hit record Twitter traffic despite ratings slump

This week’s Brit Awards generated what Twitter said was a “record breaking” amount of traffic on the social network, despite experiencing a TV ratings slump.

According to Twitter UK, more than 4 million tweets were sent about the televised UK music awards ceremony, double last year’s total, with a new record peak of 78,000 tweets per-minute logged.

This was in spite of the show receiving what was reported to be its lowest TV ratings in at least 15 years after 4.2 million people tuned into the live broadcast. Including time-shifted audience, the Brits averaged 4.6 million viewers – more than 2 million viewers down on last year.

Twitter attributed the social bounce that the show received this year to the fact that fans were invited to vote for an award live on Twitter for the first time, choosing the winner of the Best British Video.

“During the broadcast, there were a whopping two million Tweets sent about the live vote alone,” according to Twitter UK entertainment partnerships exec Sunil Singhvi, in a blog post about the show.

Of the 42 acts nominated for this year’s Brit awards, all but one have a Twitter presence, while seven out of the world’s top 10 most-followed Twitter accounts belong to musicians, according to Twitter.