海角大神

Election Day was Twitter鈥檚 once again on Tuesday, as the social media service saw a record number of tweets posted to its platform throughout the day.

鈥淔or all of its flaws and the badness of the product itself, the election has proven Twitter is vital,鈥� Ben Thompson, the founder of Stratechery, a technology industry analysis site, told The New York Times. 鈥淭he immediacy and speed is unmatched by any other network.鈥澛�

Twitter鈥檚 surging popularity contrasts with its recent dive in stock value, an unsuccessful attempt to sell itself off, and its announcement it would cut 9 percent of its workforce and close the video app Vine. From the first presidential debate in September to the hours after the polls closed, however, more than one billion election-related posts swirled across the network.

While detractors have criticized Twitter for the hateful, misogynistic, and anti-Semitic tweets that have gone unchecked on its network, its popularity on Election Day has once again shown that its real-time flow of information and discussions is indispensable in the new media age.

This was evident in the number of tweets posted on the site starting early Tuesday. By 11 a.m. EST, 27,000 election-related posts circulated across the network every minute, according to The New York Times. By 10 p.m., the total number jumped to about 40 million, exceeding the 31 million sent on Election Day 2012. 聽

This success started with Twitter鈥檚 early effort to prepare for the big day. In addition to ramping up its ad sale operations, it streamed video on its platform, starting with the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. For Election Day, Twitter partnered with BuzzFeed to broadcast the news site's election coverage from its offices in New York City. A number of websites also embedded tweets onto their web pages, from news sites such as The New York Times and The Washington Post to entertainment-focused sites such as TMZ and Perez Hilton.

But the appeal of Twitter on Election Day is likely bolstered by how Americans follow the presidential race, as USA Today鈥檚 Jessica Guynn wrote.

鈥淪ocial media is a popular聽destination for American voters聽on election night. They fire up laptops, tablets and smartphones 鈥撀燼nd sometimes聽all three 鈥撀爐o spend the evening in the company of election-obsessed friends and followers around the country,鈥� she writes. 鈥淔acebook is the spot where many people seek support and camaraderie from friends. But Twitter is frequently the spot where people hunt for the latest information and commentary.鈥�

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has also brought newfound attention to Twitter, championing it as a 鈥渕odern-day form of communication.鈥� Throughout the election, he fired off Twitter posts at odd hours of the morning, and the picture he sent of himself eyeing his wife's ballot as they voted went viral Tuesday. The New York Times even reported this past week that Mr. Trump鈥檚 campaign had wrested his Twitter account away from him in an effort to control his temper and his loose hands. But some of Trump鈥檚 supporters and members of the alt-right have stirred controversy this election.

Twitter has been criticized for its inability to check posts many consider hateful, misogynistic, and anti-Semitic. According to the Anti-Defamation League, Twitter experienced an uptick between August 2015 and this past July in the number of anti-Semitic tweets directed at journalists, with at least 800 journalists receiving such messages. George Washington University鈥檚 Program on Extremism also recently found white nationalists and Nazi sympathizers have run largely unchecked on Twitter, as their followings have grown.

In response to recent criticism about the spread of hateful messages on its platform, Twitter pointed to its get-out-the-vote initiatives.

鈥淥ur goal is to increase engagement in the election process and encourage voter turnout,鈥� a Twitter spokesman said in a statement.

With 317 million monthly users (Facebook has 1.79 billion monthly active users), Twitter has shown there鈥檚 still a place for it in the social media world.

鈥淭he core ideals that made the product great are not lost, yet, even if they鈥檝e been obscured,鈥� tech journalist Joshua Topolsky wrote in a New Yorker piece early this year. 鈥淭he directness and power at the heart of Twitter 鈥� short bursts of information that can make you feel that you鈥檙e plugged into a hulking hive mind 鈥� are still its greatest asset.鈥�