Debate wrap-up: Big bird and big trends in social media

(CBS News) On Wednesday night, the first 2012 presidential debate generated a record setting number of tweets referring to the event -- more than 10.3 million tweets referenced the debate in the span of 90 minutes.

One of the top tweeted moments of the night came when Mitt Romney discussed cutting federal funding to PBS as part of his broader effort to address the deficit. Twitter saw a spike of more than 135K Tweets per minute, as Mitt Romney confessed his love for Big Bird.

PHOTO: Denver #debate Twitter activity for #BigBird tops 135K Tweets per minute at 9:34pmET twitter.com/CBSThisMorning...

— CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) October 4, 2012

Over a quarter million tweets mentioned the famed "Sesame Street" star last night, and Big Bird and #SaveBigBird were both trending topics worldwide. Soon enough, Romney's comments inspired the creation of @FiredBigBird, a parody account that racked up over 26,000 followers in a few hours, which was briefly suspended on Thursday -- or as they tweeted, "fired" -- but is now back in the satirical tweets game:

Organizing a Million Muppet March against Mitt... #MuppetsAgainstMitt

-- Big Bird (@FiredBigBird) October 4, 2012

It was true we were in fact fired... but we got some Obama stimulus money and we are back up and running! #BigBird #PBS

-- Big Bird (@FiredBigBird) October 4, 2012

Not one to be left out of the action, the real Big Bird chimed in for an update on Thursday morning:

Big Bird: My bed time is usually 7:45, but I was really tired yesterday and fell asleep at 7! Did I miss anything last night?

-- Sesame Street (@sesamestreet) October 4, 2012

And, President Obama took to Twitter to reiterate Romney's stance on PBS...and of course, on Big Bird :

President Obama: "Thank goodness somebody is finally getting tough on Big Bird."

-- Barack Obama (@BarackObama) October 4, 2012

Google tracked rising search terms to look at what issues American's were searching and found that "Big Bird" was the 4th most Googled term. Simpson-Bowles followed by Dodd-Frank were the top terms searched on Google.