Sharknado takes a big bite out of Twitter

Something lit up Twitter last night and it wasn't a political scandal or a big celebrity sighting.

What got Twitter users so worked up was Sharknado, the SyFy channel's campy disaster movie meets monster flick, which premiered Thursday night. Starring B-list actors Tara Reid and Ian Ziering, the movie has a simple premise: A tornado scoops up a bevvy or sharks and rains them down on Los Angeles, where they quickly begin chomping on the city's residents.

Well, that was enough to get people, even some pretty big celebrities, tweeting.

"Omg omg OMG," tweeted actress Mia Farrow. "Tomorrow I'll pick up a chain saw."

And Wil Wheaton, an actor best known for his role as Wesley Crusher, on TV's Star Trek: The Next Generation, tweeted, "Seafood restaurant commercial during #SharkNado. Brilliant."

Celebrities weren't the only ones who were compelled to tweet about the SyFy movie. A Twitter spokeswoman reported Friday afternoon that as of 1 p.m. EDT, there had been 435,000 tweets about Sharknado in the past 24 hours. At its peak, there were 5,032 tweets per minute about the movie.

The most retweeted comment came from @TheTweetOfGod, the spokeswoman said. Nearly 4,700 people retweeted, "SHARKNADO SEQUELS. Wolfano Bearnami Hippoquake Piranhurricane Tarantulavalanche Lizard Blizzard."

While there was a flood of tweets about Sharknado, it was nowhere near a Twitter record.

For instance, this year's Super Bowl match-up garnered 24.1 million tweets about the game and halftime show -- during the game.

On Election Day last year, 31 million tweets were posted about the election, with Twitter hitting a peak of 327,452 tweets per minute when the national networks began calling the election for President Barack Obama.

Here's the SyFy trailer for the disaster movie Sharknado.

Sharon Gaudin covers the Internet and Web 2.0, emerging technologies, and desktop and laptop chips for Computerworld. Follow Sharon on Twitter at @sgaudin, on Google+ or subscribe to Sharon's RSS feed. Her email address is sgaudin@computerworld.com.

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