Super Bowl inspires 2.4 million tweets

As the Baltimore Ravens took on the San Francisco 49ers, athletes and commentators alike were taking to the social network to share their thoughts. By the beginning of the second half of play, the total during last year's event had already been surpassed.

It was helped to that figure by the surprising power outage, which left the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans, Louisana shrouded in darkness for half an hour.

Some companies took this as an opportunity to capitalise, using the moment to quickly drum up their own advertising ideas in the hope that they would go viral.

Oreo posted an image with the tagline "you can still dunk in the dark", while Tide tweeted "we can't get your #blackout, but we can get your stains out".

Some 12,000 people retweeted the Oreo advert, showing how marketers don't always need to spend vast amounts of cash on the American football event's famous half-time TV spots.