Twitter has just released new statistics on the surge of activity that followed news of Osama bin Laden's death. While the slew of Twitter status updates set a new record for "sustained" tweeting, bin Laden's death failed to overtake prior events for the number of tweets sent per second.
Twitter said it recorded the "highest sustained rate of Tweets ever" on Sunday evening, when an average of 3,440 tweets per second were sent between 10:45PM EST and 12:30 AM EST.
The tweets sent per second reached a peak of 5,106 at 11PM EST on Sunday evening. It's an impressive figure, but one that falls short of the rate recorded during the Japanese earthquake and tsunami (5,530 tweets per second) and New Year's Eve (6,939 tweets per second).
The Internet traffic spike prompted by Obama's announcement increased global web traffic by 24 percent, though bin Laden's death not make Akamai's list of the top news events, as measured by page views per minute. Sporting events, including the World Cup qualifying match played during a record-setting Wimbledon match, as well as the "Royal Wedding" ranked higher in terms of total page views per minute.
See a chart of Twitter's activity on Flickr and follow @TwitterGlobalPR for more information. Also follow our live blog for the latest updates on fallout from bin Laden's death.