Super Bowl Numbers Call Twitter’s Supposed Demise Into Question

Twitter had one of its most active days ever during Super Bowl LVII, giving the platform a needed boost after a wild four months since Elon Musk took over as owner.

On game day, the total number of tweets in the U.S. was up 20% and total tweeters were up 18%, each year-over-year, according to sources familiar with the data.

Unsurprisingly, Patrick Mahomes, Jalen Hurts, and Travis Kelce were the most tweeted-about players during the Kansas City Chiefs’ 38-35 victory over the Philadelphia Eagles — but Rihanna’s halftime performance was the most tweeted-about moment overall.

The Big Game results are major validation for Twitter after months of financial turmoil.

Of the company’s top 1,000 advertisers in September, 625 stopped advertising on Twitter by January, per CNN. Monthly revenue dropped by more than 60% from October to January 25, according to the data — or from about $127 million to just over $48 million.

Musk rallied and struck deals with two major Super Bowl sponsors — PepsiCo and Anheuser-Busch InBev — just days ahead of the game. But that may not have been enough to satisfy the CEO.

After failing to publish a hit Super Bowl tweet (by his standards), Musk reportedly had the app’s algorithm tweaked so that his tweets would appear at the top of users’ timelines.