Research: Super Bowl XLVI Biggest Social Media Event Ever

Around 12.2 million social media comments were posted, up nearly 600% from last year's game according to Bluefin Labs

By George Winslow -- Broadcasting & Cable, 2/6/2012 5:19:55 PM

Super Bowl XLVI was not only the highest rated TV event in history, an analysis of social media activity surrounding the big game found that it was also the largest social media event for TV, with some 5.4 million "commentators" posting some 12.2 million comments, according to Bluefin Labs.

That dramatically beat the previous record, "MTV Video Music Awards (Aug 2011), which had 3.1M comments," according to a blog posted by Michael Guigli on the Bluefin site. "Compared with last year's Super Bowl, yesterday's event experienced almost 600% growth!"

Social media activity peaked with over 400,000 comments during a five minute period when the New York Giants scored the winning touchdown in the fourth quarter.

The halftime show also ranked as the four highest entertainment event in social TV history, with 862,000 comments according to Bluefin.

The top rated entertainment event remains last August's MTV Video Music Awards with 3.1 million comments, followed by the Nov. 2011 American Music Awards (2.4 million comments) and the Feb. 2011 83^rd Academy Awards with around 966,000.

Comments for the Super Bowl this year were pretty evenly distributed by gender with 53% coming from men and 47% from women.

The top rated Super Bowl ad was H&M's "Bodywear for H&M," which had around 109,000 comments, followed by Chrysler's "It's Halftime in America" featuring Clint Eastwood, which had around 96,000 comments and NBC's The Voice/ "Mortal Kombat" ad featuring Betty White with around 90,000, according to Bluefin.