Denver Presidential Debate Most Tweeted Event In U.S. Political History: Twitter

(Newsroom America) -- Twitter says the first presidential debate between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama in Denver was the most tweeted about event in United States political history.

"Tonight's debate was the most tweeted about event in US political history, topping the numbers from the RNC and DNC," the Government and Politics team @gov said in a tweet.

It said the start of the debate had already topped the RNC and Michelle Obama's DNC speech in terms of Tweets per minute.

It said there were 17,000 Tweets per minute for "Big Bird" after Republican Nominee Mitt Romney said "I'm sorry Jim. I'm gonna stop the subsidy to PBS. I'm gonna stop other things. I like PBS, I like Big Bird, I actually like you too."

There was also 10,000 Tweets per minute for "PBS", according to @gov.

After the Romney comment, someone created a @FiredBigBird account which one hour after the debate had picked up nearly 18,000 followers.

"In the last 24 hours there have now been twice as many Tweets about tonight's debate than there were about all of the #debates in 2008," said @gov.

Trending topics in the United States following the debate were #Debate2012, #ToAllYouNewAngels, #2012debate, #MiddleSchoolMemories, Howard Fineman, #thenandnow, Big Bird, CNN Poll, PBS and Jim Lehrer.