The papal conclave has been dominating conversations on Twitter since the cardinals entered the Sistine Chapel earlier this week. The Twitter frenzy reached fever pitch on Wednesday afternoon when white smoke was spotted billowing above the Vatican and Pope Francis was revealed.
The official Papal twitter account, @pontifex, was also reactivated on Wednesay. The account, had been suspended shortly after Pope Benedict XVI resigned in late February. The account's first tweet, below, was retweeted more than 12,000 times in a few short minutes.
Twitter later confirmed that more than 130 million tweets were sent around the world after the new Pope was announced.
Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the man who was named Pope, also had an active Facebook page (in Spanish) with some 50,000 fans. It is not known if this page was being run by the Cardinal or his staff.
There's also a Twitter account @JMBergoglio, that at first glance may have belonged to Cardinal Bergoglio, but Slate and Mashable is reporting that the account is likely a fake. Nonetheless, that account gained thousands of followers in the last few hours.
As of 3:00 pm ET, the majority of the global trending topics on Twitter were related to the election of the new pope. Trends like "#HabemusPapam and #whitesmoke" dominated conversations from the millions of people watching the Papal conclave from around the world.
Of course, it isn't all pomp, circumstance and seriousness. #ReplaceMovieTitlesWithPope was also one of the trending hashtags and jokes about Papal bongs and Papal 'Groundhog Days' were being tweeted.
Some of the best tweets about the selection of the new pope are below:
You can also get live updates and analysis on the new pope on our live blog: