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Beyonce's pregnancy news at Sunday night's MTV video music awards (VMAs) has broken a Twitter record.

Users on the microblogging site posted 8,868 tweets per second when the singer showed off her baby bump after her performance at the event.

The previous record was 7,196 after Japan's win over the US in the women's World Cup final in July.

This will be the first child for 29-year-old Beyonce and her husband of three years Jay-Z, who is 41.

Another football match is next in terms of the highest number of tweets per second ever sent after Brazil's loss to Paraguay in the Copa America.

Twitter users sent 7,166 tweets per second at the end of that match.

6,939 tweets per second were sent on 1 January, 2011 as the new year arrived in Tokyo and more than 5,000 per second as news spread of the death of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in May.

Other peaks for Twitter activity include the 11 March earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan, with 5,530 tweets per second, and the royal wedding in April, with 3,966 tweets per second.

Twitter said in June that Twitter users are sending 200 million tweets a day, up from 65 million a year ago.

Meanwhile, the VMAs drew MTV's biggest audience since the network began recording its viewing figures.

Sunday night's show attracted 12.4 million viewers.