When the path-breaking American astronaut Neil Armstrong passed away at age 82 on August 25th, Twitter lit up as people around the world shared the news. Within about a day, their conversations and condolences added up to 1.6 million Tweets.

Inspired by this global expression, our data analyst Jeremy Briggs and Ian Padgham) created a bit of a story in this video.

We remember the first man on the moon: youtu.be/1XjF7WHWehg
— Twitter (@twitter) August 31, 2012

We salute the man whose family described him as “a reluctant American hero” whose life “serves as an example to young people around the world to work hard to make their dreams come true, to be willing to explore and push the limits, and to selflessly serve a cause greater than themselves.”

Posted by Karen Wickre, Editorial Director

It’s the final night of the #GOP2012 convention and it was a blockbuster ending in terms of the conversation on Twitter. Tonight, the total number of Tweets sent about the Republican National Convention hit four million soon after the end of Governor Romney’s speech — nearly doubling the total count before today.

And while most people joining the conversation on Twitter couldn’t be here themselves, they were brought closer to the events of the evening and the candidates thanks to the Tweets from Tampa. Tonight we saw incredible behind the scenes pictures documenting @mittromney enters the building twitter.com/ZacMoffatt/sta…

— Zac Moffatt (@ZacMoffatt) @marcorubio and Clint Eastwood earned the second and third biggest moments on Twitter of the entire convention, respectively. Rubio’s biggest spike was 8,937 Tweets per minute, Eastwood’s was 7,044 Tweets per minute.

As the nation tuned in to watch tonight’s speeches, Twitter was the place they shared their observations— be they serious or snarky. One creative response to Clint Eastwood’s moment onstage with the empty chair was the creation of@AdamS)

While we’re here in Tampa, we’ve been talking to journalists, candidates, political pundits and others about the way Twitter has influenced the election and their work. Today, we’re talking with Ben Smith, Editor-in-Chief of

For the latest from the campaign trail, follow the rest of the Buzzfeed political team too: @rosiegray,@rebeccagberg.

Posted by Rachael Horwitz, Senior Manager, Communications (@rachaelrad)

On Thursday, @LorenzoOBLimon is already getting a start by heading to Miami early:

Ya voy rumbo a Miami. @jencarlosmusic, he’s looking forward to his fans’ support on the big night:

LosAmoATodos!!! Y nos vemos este jueves en PremiosTuMundo!!! Muchas gracias por todo el apoyo!!
— Jencarlos - Oficial (#What? Nos vemos el Jueves en Premios Tu Mundo’s Talent Member list. And to stay involved with TV and music events on Twitter, be sure to follow @gracelee
TV Partnerships Team

Tonight delegates from across the country gathered in the Tampa Bay Times Forum for the second night of speeches at the Republican National Convention. The headliner was August 30, 2012

Rousing end: ``Let's give this effort everything we have.Let'ssee this through all the way.Let's get this done.'' Condoleezza Rice. Her speech peaked at 3,961 Tweets per minute, higher than any speaker outside of Ryan. Much of the Twitter conversation was about the style of her speech:

Best part of listening to Condi is you can hear the nervous tremor in her voice and yet she is completely fluent at the same time.

— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) twitter.com/Phil_Mattingly…

— Phil Mattingly (@Phil_Mattingly) August 30, 2012

Stay tuned to @gov for more updates tomorrow from the big finale of the Republican National Convention!

Posted by Adam Sharp, Head of Government, News and Social Innovation (@AdamS)

As the number of businesses that turn to Twitter to keep in touch with their customers grows, so does the variety of their needs. We hear continually from companies looking for tools to help them engage with customers, understand what people are saying about them on Twitter, and learn more about their followers so they can share more valuable, timely content.

Meanwhile, there is a thriving ecosystem of Twitter developers building products and services that address these needs and help businesses grow. To make it easier for businesses to find the right tools, we’re launching the Twitter Certified Products Program. Certified Products represent some of the best offerings in these three categories:

1. Engagement: To get closer to customers on Twitter. One example: Sprinklr has helped companies such as GM, Virgin America and Nike respond to Tweets at scale.

2. Analytics: To measure activity on Twitter and offer insights into what people are saying. For instance, Crimson Hexagon has helped Hollywood studios better understand how conversation on Twitter relates to box office success.

3. Data reseller: To make a large number of public Tweets available to partners to build products and services. For example, Gnip and DataSift power many of the monitoring and analytics products on the market.

Posted by @ at 10:11 AM

Just as Olympics withdrawal is starting to set in for many of us, the @aleginfaith) tweeted a photo of a slight snag in his high-speed training:

Prosthitists these days thinking they can just take your foot off and leave you stranded.. @alananichols21), a member of the U.S. wheelchair basketball team, tells us exactly what it takes to get the group to London:

The August 23, 2012

at 11:48 PM

The Republican National Convention officially began yesterday but the big ticket activities kicked off today. First order of business: formally selecting@anndromney speak at the convention. @ChristieKeynote.

I believe we have been paralyzed with our desire to be loved.

— Gov. Chris Christie (@christiekeynote) August 29, 2012

Keep following @gov this week. We’ll have more to share as the convention rolls on.

Posted by Adam Sharp, Head of Government, News and Social Innovation (@AdamS)

Here in Tampa at the 2012 Republican National Convention, hashtags are the new political slogan:

At the RNC, August 27, 2012

While the speeches will be at the podium this week, the conversation will be on Twitter: we’ve already seen more Tweets about this week’s confab than we saw during the entire week of the 2008 Republican convention. To gather the most relevant, interesting Tweets during the convention we’ve created an event page at @tbtimesforum @gov for more Twitter insights from the convention floor. And stay tuned next week, when we head to Charlotte for the Democratic National Convention.

Posted by Adam Sharp, Head of Government, News and Social Innovation (@AdamS)

A year ago we introduced the world to Twitter Bootstrap, a sleek and powerful open source project that helps you build awesome stuff on the web with speed, ease and style. Bootstrap was made to help our engineers improve the tools we use to run Twitter internally; we quickly recognized that folks outside the company could make use of it as well. Fast forward one year to today, Bootstrap's first birthday, and we have a massively popular project that keeps growing while staying true to its ultimate goal: helping anyone make amazing software for the web.

Today, we want to highlight Bootstrap's growth and impact over the last 12 months and introduce the newest version, Bootstrap 2.1.

Popularity

Within a few months of its launch, the project grew to be the most popular project on the world's largest social coding service, GitHub. Since then, we've released a handful of updates to continually close bugs, add awesome new features, and make it easier to use for those who are less familiar with web design. In all, we've closed thousands of bugs while adding dozens of features to help make more compelling and visually pleasing web sites and applications. The open source community has been incredibly kind and appreciative about Bootstrap over the last year, so we're delighted to keep giving back.

Community

Speaking of community, Bootstrap wouldn't be the success it is today without a lot of love and support from the development and open source communities. Looking past just the bug reports and feature requests, we have an amazing set of people contributing directly to Bootstrap. More than 100 people have pushed code to Bootstrap. That's a stat we're not only proud of, but excited to see grow.

We're constantly amazed at the number and scope of projects using Bootstrap. Some of our favorites come from larger organizations: NASA's SoundReady, Jetstrap using Bootstrap to create brand new products and services.

Bootstrap 2.1

With Bootstrap 2.1, we focused on simplicity. We completely overhauled the documentation to make it easier for people just getting to know Bootstrap and web development. We placed more emphasis on live examples and succinct, thorough text to walk people through each aspect. And, as is the case with every release, we've added a handful of new features and made existing ones even better. But that just brushes the surface: we've closed over 100 issues in Bootstrap 2.1—issues all reported and documented by the very folks who use it.

Looking forward

The Web is a constantly changing place, and the tools we use to build for that evolving landscape need to reflect it. Looking ahead, we will continue focus on simplicity as we add new features, improve mobile functionality, and encourage developers to embrace new techniques as we add them to the framework. The last year has been a blast, and we're excited to keep improving Bootstrap with every release in order to help others make the web a better place.

Posted by Mark Otto (@mdo), Designer

After so much (well-deserved) focus on the incredible feats — and notable Tweets — of Olympic athletes recently, we wanted to switch gears and shine a light on some of the best musical moments to come out of the London games.

The theme of last Sunday night’s Closing Ceremony was a instagr.am/p/OPglXXH5TL/

— Emeli Sandé (@emelisande) August 12, 2012

Time to hand over to brazil!!!

— Emeli Sandé (@emelisande) “We Will Rock You.” British rap star, Tinie Tempah (instagr.am/p/OP6m8iQ0Xw/

— JESSIE J (@JessieJ) August 12, 2012

And who knew that British rapper @tatiana)

On the closing day of the 2012 Summer Olympics, we’re looking back at all of the memorable moments of the London Games: the wins, the losses, the drama, and above all, the Tweets. No matter the sport, Twitter was your front row seat for all the action.

We saw more than 150 million Tweets about the Olympics over the past 16 days. Let’s take a look at some of the big trends within that massive conversation.

The biggest moments of competition, as measured by Tweets per minute, were:

News of presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s (
Speculation about Ryan’s selection began building shortly after 11 pm EDT with word from Romney’s Communications Director (@RepPaulRyan) is approaching 175,000.

We’ve also been able to use the @TimPawlenty. By this week, Ryan was leading the others with an average Twindex of 63.

Tomorrow night, the world will meet Sharkzilla. That’s right: Discovery Channel’s Shark Week (@SharkWeek to stay updated on all the jaw-dropping action, and get ready to cast your votes for what you want to see happen on your TV. Sharkzilla is waiting for everyone to pick his next meal:

2 more days until the August 11, 2012

Posted by Grace Chu Lee, TV Partnerships Team (@gracelee)

We often say “You never know where Twitter will take you,” but here’s one that (almost) defies imagination. Last night, we saw that NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (#nasa

— Bobak F. (@tweetsoutloud) August 6, 2012

Curiosity is about to vent the cruise stage part of its cooling system in prep for separation #EDL #MSL @nasajpl last night. What an accomplishment! @marscuriosity, Neil deGrasse Tyson signing out on Earth. Back to work - for us both. Closing my Twitterverse wormhole to Mars.

— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) @sesamestreet Science is cool. Yip-yip-yip-yip... Uh-huh. Uh-huh. @marscuriosity. Hi there.Welcome to the neighborhood.Sorry about the mess.Haven't had guests in a while.

— The Surface of Mars (@surfaceofmars) @TheRealBuzz) once said, “Mars is there, waiting to be reached”. Thanks for taking us there, @AdamS)