Millions of mourners honour Mandela's legacy on social media

HOUSTON: Millions took to social media to honour the legacy of anti-apartheid legend Nelson Mandela, who died at the age of 95, with Twitter generating 7.2 million tweets.

That total surpasses some busy Twitter moments from this year, but doesn't set any Twitter record, said a spokesperson of the microbogging site.

Users generated 7.2 million tweets about his death, including a peak of 95,000 tweets per minute, said the spokesperson.

For comparison, the Super Bowl in February between the San Francisco 49ers and Baltimore Ravens generated over 24 million tweets, including more than 231,000 per minute during the game's power outage.

On Facebook, the traffic was even higher. A total of 39 million people generated more than 80 million interactions related to Mandela's death.

As to be expected, South Africa was the second most active country in terms of posts about its former president, following the US.

Mandela, South Africa's first black president who steered his nation out of apartheid and into multi-race democracy, died late on Thursday after protracted illness.