The VMAs set a Twitter record, and you can thank future President Kanye West. According to Nielsen, the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards is the most-tweeted non-sports program since Nielsen Social started tracking Twitter data in 2011. In the U.S., 2.2 million people sent 21.4million tweets – an increase of 64% over the 2014 ceremony. The most tweeted minute was at 10:49 p.m. EST: 247,525 tweets flooded in when West said he’d seek the presidency in 2020.
Speaking of which, don’t expect to see too many “West in 2020” yard signs. According to Amobee Brand Intelligence, negative sentiment surrounding the VMAs peaked on Twitter right around the time of his announcement, when 15,291 negative VMA-related tweets flooded the Twitterverse. West was by far the event’s most tweeted-about figure, garnering a total of 2,286,585 tweets.