Washington - Twitter said on Sunday that users were firing off a record 10 000 tweets per second in the final three minutes of the Super Bowl.

Madonna's half-time performance during the New York Giants 21-17 victory over the New England Patriots also saw a surge in Twitter activity with users tapping out an average of 8 000 tweets per second for five minutes, the San Francisco-based short-messaging service said on its Twitter feed.

The 10 000 tweets per second in the final three minutes of the game, when Giants quarterback Eli Manning guided his team downfield for the game-clinching touchdown, topped the previous record of nearly 9 000 tweets per second set in August with Beyonce's pregnancy announcement at the MTV Video Music Awards.

The previous record for a sporting event was the 7 196 tweets per second at the final whistle of Japan's thrilling upset win over the United States in the women's World Cup final in July.

Twitter's more than 100 million users sent more than 60 billion tweets last year.