Beyonce and outage light up Twitter during Super Bowl

Number of Tweets during the Super Bowl surpassed 2012 total by halftime

Last night's Super Bowl was a fantastic game! Not only did it set NFL records set for the longest kickoff return and longest quarterback run for a touchdown, it nearly saw the biggest-ever Super Bowl comeback of all time. Of course its sad that the 49ers had to lose, but I'll take a game like that any day.

Unfortunately, I fear that many people did not stick around for the amazing second half of the game, considering how lopsided the score was at the end of the first half and the fact that, as you may have heard, there was a 33 minute long delay due to a blackout in the Superdome.

As you probably suspected, the blackout lit up Twitter (pun intended) with 231,500 tweets per minute, Twitter said on its blog Monday.

It easily beat out the other big moments of the game, including the 108-yard kick off return by Ravens wide receive Jacoby Jones (185,000 TPM), the moment the Ravens won the game (183,000 TPM), Jacoby Jones catching a 56 yard pass for a touchdown at the end of the second quarter (168,000 TPM) and 49ers running back Frank Gore scoring a touchdown to cut the Ravens lead (131,000 TPM).

 The blackout also inspired some pretty amazing and hilarious tweets from the likes of the Onion and Neil Patrick Harris:

— Onion Sports Network (@OnionSports) February 4, 2013

— Neil Patrick Harris (@ActuallyNPH) February 4, 2013

Here's what caused the Super Bowl power outagetwitter.com/jonweisman/sta…

— Jon Weisman (@jonweisman) February 4, 2013

There was one other major beneficiary of the blackout: the #PuppyBowl, which saw around 500,000 Tweets, had an uptick during the power outage.

The other thing that everyone on the Twitterverse was talking about last night, of course, was Beyonce's halftime show, which even beat the blackout for the most Tweets per minute, generated a total of 5.5 million Tweets. 

The conclusion of her show topped the list with 268,000 TPM, followed by the Destiny’s Child reunion on stage (257,500 TPM) and the singing of ‘Single Ladies’ (252,500 TPM).

Full disclosure: I did not watch the halftime show. That is when I took the opportunity to go get myself some dinner. But I heard it was good! Even the First Lady liked it!

— FLOTUS (@FLOTUS) February 4, 2013

Overall, there were 24.1 million Tweets sent out about the game and the halftime show combined, beating out last year's total by the beginning of the second half. 

The most players that got the most mentions on Twitter were (in order): Ray Lewis (@Raylewis), Joe Flacco (@teamflacco), Colin Kaepernick (@Kaepernick7) and Jacoby Jones.

(Image source: https://bleacherreport.com)