A new Twitter record for highest amount of tweets posted per second has been set during the climax of the Women’s football World Cup. The final match, between Japan and America, which ended in a nail-biting penalty shoot-out, helped set a new Twitter record, with 7,196 tweets published per second.

Even US President Barack Obama contributed to the Twitter storm, tweeting: “Incredible performance from #USWNT, no matter what happens. Now on to penalties. Let's win this.” Japan ended up taking the title home.

Until now, the record had been set by the amount of Twitter activity in Japan on New Years Eve in 2010, which at its peak, 6,939 tweets were sent per second.

Last year, the men’s World Cup final marked the largest ever period of sustained tweeting, with more than 2,000 tweets per second during the final 15 minutes of the game. Last week Twitter celebrated its fifth anniversary since making its full public debut. The site has more than 200 million users, who are sharing 350 billion links a day.