PBS Big Bird, Mitt Romney Mention In 2012 Presidential Debate Breaks Twitter Records
According to the numbers in social media, Big Bird and PBS were the biggest winners during the first presidential debate on Oct. 3.
The debate with President Obama against Republican candidate Mitt Romney rapidly increased the popularity of the children's character.
When Romney mentioned that he would stop funding to PBS, the network that airs "Sesame Street," a series of support drives was instantly created online to show support for the popular children's program that has been on air since 1969.
"I'm going to stop the subsidy to PBS," Romney said. "I'm going to stop other things. I like PBS, I love Big Bird. Actually, [I] like you [moderator Jim Lehrer], too. But I'm not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for."
Romeny addressed Lehrer, the debate's moderator, because he is employed by PBS.
Shortly after Romney's mention of Big Bird, the beloved character's name exploded into the social media stratosphere. According to Twitter, "Big Bird" was tweeted 17,000 times per minute and PBS peaked at 10,000 tweets per minute.
"Big Bird" was also the fourth highest-rising search term on Google, according to ABC News.
The hashtag #SaveBigBird, trended worldwide and led to the creation of three pro-Big Bird Twitter handles: @BigBird, @BigBirdRomney and @FiredBigBird.
The @BigBird handle sparked comments including, "I guess I'm the 47%..."; The @FiredBigBird attracted 2,000 followers in the first two minutes it was created, and 16,000 people were following an hour after the debate; The @BigBirdRomney had about 7,000 followers an hour after the debate.
One Sesame Street fan created a Facebook fan page called "Big Bird for President."
Sesame Workshop, the producers of "Sesame Street," jumped in the social media firestorm by releasing their statement on Twitter. "We are a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization. We do not comment on campaigns, but we're happy we can all agree everyone likes Big Bird!" they tweeted.
Romney's mention of Big Bird is not the first time he referenced the fluffy, yellow giant.
He mentioned the "Sesame Street" character in Iowa last December during his campaign trail, where he said "we're not going to kill Big Bird," and then explained he is against the idea that funding for PBS comes from taxpayers when it should come from advertisers.
Big Bird wasn't the only sensation on Twitter on Oct. 3.
According to Twitter data, the presidential debate was the most tweeted political event in history.
Twitter spokeswoman Rachael Horwitz tweeted, "Tonight's debate was the most tweeted about event in US political history, topping the numbers from the RNC and DNC. #debates."
The debate alone generated more than 10.3 million tweets, outnumbering the 9.5 million tweets accrued across several days during the Democratic Convention last month.
The Republican Convention measured 4 million tweets, according to Twitter Government (@gov), who tracks political tweets.
