#VMAs tally 16.5 million tweets, Kanye’s speech most talked about moment

Sentiment about the Cyrus-hosted affair skewed more positive (26 percent) than negative (13 percent), with the majority of negative tweets occurring during West’s 10-minute long acceptance speech for the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award, according to Amobee Brand Intelligence.

For the first time this year, MTV automatically inserted a special moonman emoji to tweets using the #VMAs hashtag, which seemed to have encouraged more people to use it. There were 4.19 million tweets with the hashtag, a sharp increase from 1.44 million tweets tallied during last year’s show, Amobee says.

Although old fashioned television ratings won’t be released until later this afternoon, the data shows this year’s awards fest was the buzziest show yet. Thanks, Miley?

Here are the top five most tweeted about moments, according to Amobee’s data:

Kanye’s speech. 
The rapper’s 10-minute long acceptance speech, in which he (jokingly?) declared he’s running for president in 2020, garnered 551,466 tweets.

Kanye is so cute, y’all.

— Justin Timberlake (@jtimberlake) August 31, 2015

Miley’s malfunction. 
Not surprisingly, the last ten minutes of the show when Cyrus accidentally showed her boob and the announcement that her latest album, partly written by Flaming Lips singer Wayne Coyne, is being released online for free racked up 147,285 tweets.  

I mean, if we thought we’d end the night before seeing Miley’s boob, we were just being naive. #VMAs — Christina Warren (@film_girl) August 31, 2015

Bieber’s breakdown.
Justin Bieber had quite the emotional evening, breaking down into tears following his performance of his latest song “What Do You Mean?,” prompting people to wonder what the hell was going on. His 10-minute performance racked up 80,136 tweets.

I was crying with Bieber too tbh that was angelic af

— Rene (@Rene) August 31, 2015

Swift’s introduction.
It wasn’t Swift’s surprise cameo during Nicki Minaj’s opening performance that garnered the most tweets about the “Bad Blood” singer, rather it was her introduction of West, who famously interrupted her acceptance speech in 2009, that sparked 27,162 tweets.

Time for Taylor to run up on stage and rip that award from Kanye’s hands — stuart emmrich (@StuartEmmrichNY) August 31, 2015

Minaj vs. Miley.
Minaj’s was reportedly “livid” over Cyrus’ comments to the New York Times about a Minaj-Swift Twitter exchange earlier this year — and she let the world see it. After winning Best Hip Hop Video, the rapper threw it back to Cyrus saying “And now … back to this bitch that had a lot to say about me in the press. Miley, what’s good?” The very awkward and apparently not scripted moment garnered 27,441 tweets.

Lmfaooooooooooooo

— NICKI MINAJ (@NICKIMINAJ) August 31, 2015