Another way to extract this figure is to monitor the ids of tweets like the Twitpocalypse site is doing.

We've been monitoring Twitpocalypse for a while, and the data yields the following chart:

http://img.skitch.com/20090529-xhhnr83xsy67burr7w24kycp4u.pn...

From the slope, we saw about 200 tweets/second, sometimes peaking at 250 as well. The right axis in this chart is the number of tweets per minute. You can see it rising and falling through the day.

Hold on a minute. Are we talking about peak load or average load?

Saying Twitter averages 200 tweets/second is vastly different than peaking at 200 tweets a second.

Am I just being slow?

Edit: Nevermind, Robert is saying that the average is 200 tweets/second during periods of peak load. The headline here makes it seem like the maximum capacity is 200 tweets/second which is misleading.

I think what the data shows is that the average sort of wobbles around a bit. Check out the update to my post for a new image link to see it varying throughout the day.

According to him, it's the number given by "people who are getting the firehose feed."

http://friendfeed.com/scobleizer/50e673d8/some-stats-from-tw...

That makes the headline seem a bit linkbaity to me. It also makes me question the validity of the data.