Twitter: Romney's 'Big Bird' reference explodes online

Mitt Romney's Big Bird shout-out, about halfway through the first presidential debate, was one of the debate's most popular moments so far, according to viewers on Twitter.

"Big Bird" and "PBS" each earned 17,000 tweets per minute, Twitter reports. The debate was driving the majority of Twitter traffic. Romney's campaign owns the top trending topic on the microblogging service, but half of the other top ten topics on Twitter were also about the debate. One popular hashtag in heavy rotation during the debate is #zinger, referring to a report in The New York Times last week that Romney's team "has concluded that debates are about creating moments and has equipped him with a series of zingers that he has memorized and has been practicing on aides since August." Many Twitter users were looking to identify which parts of Romney's debate response were the "zingers" he had pre-planned.