Weinergate the Best Thing to Happen to Twitter All Year

We’re sure Twitter CEO Dick Costolo isn’t delighting in the misfortune of Rep. Anthony Weiner… probably. But Twitter’s first political scandal is a watershed moment for the site — and it’s got the buzz to prove it.

While it may be too soon to gauge the total traffic boost Twitter has seen from the Weinergate scandal, it’s a safe bet that the total activity is up big time (as it has been with other major news stories like the Royal Wedding and the death of Osama bin Laden). But what about Twitter mentions outside the tweeterverse? On that scale, it would seem that the Weiner-wiener fallout is the biggest thing to happen to the website all year.

According to Google Trends, Weinergate has brought the site more mentions than any other Twitter-related news all year. A chart from Google Trends (which only measures until June 2) shows that search volume surrounding Weiner’s comments on the now-infamous Twitter photos outpaced all other Twitter-related stories since June of last year.

We haven’t been able to track down a comment from Costolo (and we doubt he’ll be talking much on the matter anyway). But Weiner’s photo-sharing mishap did roughly coincide with Costolo’s announcement of Twitter’s new photo-sharing services… something we think hasn’t gone unnoticed by many of the Tweexecutives.

TAGS: anthony weiner twitter pics | Dick Costolo | Twitter | twitter pic scandal | weinergate

• 4 Most Travel Friendly Headphones
• How to Avoid The #1 Job Interview Disaster
• 7 Ridiculous Kitchen Gadgets That You Don't Need
• Pinching Pennies: Wash and Save on Laundry