Steve Jobs Dead: Twitter Sets Record With 10,000 Tweets Per Second

Apple Inc.'s co-founder has passed away on Wednesday, at the age of 56, after a long battle with pancreatic cancer.

His death has drawn widespread reactions; messages of tribute and condolences, not only from eminent personalities but also the general public, in what could be the biggest online reaction to any major event in recent history.

In fact, according to SR7, a social media monitoring firm, Twitter.com recorded as many 10,000 tweets per second on Wednesday, when news of Jobs' death was announced.

Jobs' death has now, according to SR7, recorded more tweets per second than Beyonce Knowle's performance at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards (8,868 tweets), where she announced she was pregnant. The rate of tweets on Wednesday was also greater than those following Japan's defeat of the U.S., at the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup (7,196) and the announcement of Osama bin Laden's death in May, 2011 (5,000 tweets).