Even if you didn’t watch the MTV Video Music Awards last night, if you were on Twitter, you watched the MTV Video Music Awards. Pretty much everyone’s feed was full of bon mots about the ceremony, which logged some 21.4 million tweets in the US, according to the Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings.
That insanely high number of tweets made the VMAs the most tweeted program since Nielsen began tracking the Twitter activity during TV programming, and the biggest moment of the night, by far, was Kanye West’s 13-minute acceptance speech for the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award. The speech peaked at 247,525 tweets in one minute following West’s announcement that he was running for president in 2020. This incredibly impressive bit of Twitter activity was likely helped by the crazy number of Kanye West for President visual memes that hit the web last night. However, not all of the chatter was positive—negative sentiment also peaked during West’s speech.
Globally there were some 47 million tweets about the telecast. West's speech lead the conversation globally as well, followed by John Legend’s performance with Pharrell, West’s win (along with Big Sean and Legend) for the Video with a Social Message Award, Justin Bieber’s on-stage crying, and Taylor Swift’s win for Best Female Video for her “Blank Space” video. West, Bieber, 5 Seconds of Summer, Nicki Minaj, and host Miley Cyrus, who released a free album during the VMAs, were the show’s most talked about people of the night.
X content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
