American Idol setsTwitter on Fire

The Tweets heard 'Round the World.

Twitter was a cacophony of chatter last night when Kris Allen took the American Idol title. Congratulations, comments and four-letter words scrolled down the Twitter monitoring site I was watching faster than pennies flashing by on a gas pump. Whether people were surprised, angry, stunned, delighted or disgusted, they were tweeting.

Adam Lambert, American Idol and Kris Allen were the most frequent words mentioned in tweets almost from the time American Idol came on 8:00 pm ET. In general, people loved the show--until the winner was announced and viewer consensus broke along party lines. Everyone had something to say. Adam Lambert shifted into the Most Frequent place, but early in the morning, Kris Allen moved to the top place.

Statistics on Twitter are hard to find (much less verify), but it looks like more than 362,000 tweets were posted by some 191,000 people in the first hour after Kris was proclaimed the winner. In the 2nd hour, some 144,000 twitters chirped their thoughts 259,000 times.

But, alas, the peeps picked up steam between midnight and 3:00 a.m. ET, as the West Coast TV viewers saw for themselves that America loves an underdog. The number of active twitters grew to 221,000, then 231,000, then 254,000 during that time period, and their warblings grew from 466,000 to 527,000 and then to 543,000 messages.

While it was exciting and fun to watch American Idol sing and dance it's way to the finish line, with the audience rocking and screaming, it was equally exciting to see what Americans thought as they pumped their elation or angst into cyberspace via Twitter. What a fascinating experience to be part of a crazy crowd scene while sitting quietly at home.

If twitter hadn't found it's place in the world, it has now. Twitter analytics will be the new Gallup poll and Nielsen ratings rolled into one.