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Super Bowl-related social activity was up Sunday on both Facebook & Twitter

An exciting Patriots comeback? Topical Super Bowl ads? Whatever it was, social media users were more active this year during the game than they were a year ago.

Matt McGee on February 6, 2017 at 2:28 pm

Both Facebook and Twitter are reporting increased social activity during Sunday’s Super Bowl after a big drop last year. As you likely know by now, the New England Patriots won the game after the biggest comeback in Super Bowl history, and in the first overtime game the Super Bowl has ever seen. Adding to the exciting finish, the game was marked by a series of ads tied to current events that also drew a lot of social buzz.

Facebook says 64 million users were part of the Super Bowl conversation on Sunday, up from 60 million last year — about a 7 percent gain. The company says there were 240 million Super Bowl-related interactions this year, which is up from 200 million last year. That’s a 20 percent increase.

The story is somewhat similar on Twitter, where the company says there were 27.6 million global tweets about the Super Bowl yesterday. That’s up 2.2 percent over last year’s game. Twitter also likes to count tweet impressions — i.e., how many times tweets are seen both on and off Twitter. Yesterday’s game reached 5.6 billion impressions, which is a 30 percent gain over last year’s 4.3 billion impressions.

For both social networks, this year’s numbers are a bounce-back after fairly significant declines between the 2015 and 2016 Super Bowls. The exception to that is tweet impressions, which have more than doubled since 2015.

Facebook also shared a few other data points worth noting:

More than 90 percent of this year’s interactions happened on mobile.
There were about 262 million views of Super Bowl-related videos this year.
On Instagram, 44 million users were involved in Super Bowl-related activity that totaled 150 million interactions.

Facebook defines an “interaction” as a post, comment or reaction. Its data covers the period from Midnight PT yesterday (February 5) through 8:24 p.m. PT — a little more than 20 hours. Twitter says its data covers an eight-hour period from 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. ET.

(Charts made via Beam.)

About The Author

Matt McGee

Matt McGee joined Third Door Media as a writer/reporter/editor in September 2008. He served as Editor-In-Chief from January 2013 until his departure in July 2017. He can be found on Twitter at @MattMcGee.