SocialTwitter’s Year in Review 2011: Egypt, Rebecca Black, Social Good

Twitter’s Year in Review 2011: Egypt, Rebecca Black, Social Good

Twitter’s Year in Review for 2011 shows which topics generated the most conversation around the globe on the popular social network. Egypt topped several lists, with #tigerblood, Rebecca Black, and the MTV Music Video Awards also on our minds.

As top search engines and social networks continue to release their aggregate data and trends from 2011, we get a look into the people, places, and topics that mattered most to Internet users over the last year. The democratic awakening in Egypt made #egypt the most used hashtag of the year, with Mubarak’s resignation topping the Hottest World News list. Cairo and Egypt also took first and second place as the most discussed City/Country.

Twitter’s 2011 Year in Review format differs slightly from their 2010 review; gone is the Most Retweeted category, with the Golden Tweet Award going to the single most retweeted tweet of the year. The Most Powerful tweet list is gone, replaced by The Year in Stories.

Twitter added Stories this year to showcase user-contributed experiences and demonstrate just how small the world can be with social media. Also new this year: the days that saw the most tweets per second, with the events that caused such flurries of activity.

Top Twitter Hashtags of 2011

  1. #egypt 
  2. #tigerblood 
  3. #threewordstoliveby 
  4. #idontunderstandwhy 
  5. #japan 
  6. #improudtosay 
  7. #superbowl 
  8. #jan25

Most Tweets per Second

Last winter, Twitter overhauled their infrastructure and moved to a new data center, enabling them to handle up to 8,900 tweets per second. So which topics or events generated the most buzz, judging by tweets per second, this year?

  1. MTV Music Video Awards – 8,868 on Aug 28th 
  2. Troy Davis executed – 7,671 on Sept 20th 
  3. End of FIFA Women’s World Cup – 7,196 on July 17th 
  4. Brazil eliminated from the Copa America – 7,166 on July 17th 
  5. Steve Jobs resigns – 7,064 on Aug 25th

Top Tech Topics on Twitter 2011

  1. Mac App Store 
  2. Sony NGP 
  3. Guitar Hero 
  4. Mozilla Firefox 
  5. Duke Nukem Forever 
  6. iPad 
  7. iPhone 
  8. Nintendo 3DS 
  9. Mortal Kombat 
  10. iPod

Top Music on Twitter

Twitter’s most talked about artists of the year:

  1. Rebecca Black and Friday 
  2. Nate Dogg 
  3. FEMME FATALE 
  4. Gerry Rafferty 
  5. Gil Scott-Heron

Twitter Stories 2011

We showcased a few of the Twitter Stories that marketers might find interesting back in November. Twitter doesn’t break these down into a list in their Year in Review, using it instead to promote Stories as a whole. There are a variety of stories to browse and read, though one stands out as being particularly memorable in 2011.

twitter-chopper-raidRemember Shohaib Athar? He became a Twitter celebrity overnight after inadvertently live-tweeting the military raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad.

Athar didn’t realize at the time that the helicopter overhead, which was keeping him up that night, was part of the raid. Over the course of the raid, he continued tweeting what he heard and felt going on around him, much to the delight of followers and news agencies around the globe.

And the Golden Tweet Award Goes To…

The Most Retweeted message of the year was a promoted tweet of the social good variety from @Wendys, which raised $50,000 for foster children with this campaign.

What do you think of the Year in Review 2011, according to Twitter? Let us know in the comments if there are any surprises or topics you felt might have been included!

Resources

The 2023 B2B Superpowers Index
whitepaper | Analytics

The 2023 B2B Superpowers Index

8m
Data Analytics in Marketing
whitepaper | Analytics

Data Analytics in Marketing

10m
The Third-Party Data Deprecation Playbook
whitepaper | Digital Marketing

The Third-Party Data Deprecation Playbook

1y
Utilizing Email To Stop Fraud-eCommerce Client Fraud Case Study
whitepaper | Digital Marketing

Utilizing Email To Stop Fraud-eCommerce Client Fraud Case Study

1y