President Obama had the most popular tweet of the year, while Pope Benedict XVI, Neil Young and Ringo Starr are just getting started in social. Find out which events, people and topics generated the most interest in Twitter this year.
Twitter has released their annual “Year on Twitter” collection of the hottest trends, topics, and people across five different categories.
President Obama’s tweet, “Four more years,” was Twitter’s Golden Tweet of 2012, earning more retweets than any other. Obama’s November 6 celebratory tweet after winning the election had over 810,000 retweets and was marked a favorite by more than 300,000 Twitter users.
The second most popular tweet in terms of sharing was Justin Bieber’s tribute to a young fan who had passed away. Six-year old Avalanna Routh lost her battle with a rare form of brain cancer in September. Bieber’s tweet, “RIP Avalanna. i love you” was retweeted over 220,000 times and favorited by 100,000 people.
Twitter’s Pulse of the Planet category tracks the biggest conversations on their social web, based on the number of tweets or retweets about a single event. London’s Summer Olympics took the gold with over 150 million tweets broadcast over the 16-day event. Usain Bolt’s 200m sprint win spurred the greatest volume of chatter on competitions, with 80,000 tweets per minute making him the most-discussed athlete of the year.
Other events on this list included:
Twitter describes their Trends category as, “the topics for which we see noteworthy spikes in Twitter conversations. The 2012 Trends reveal what captured our attention, rather than what terms were consistently popular.”
In politics, #tcot (Top Conservatives on Twitter) and #teaparty showcased the public’s interest in discussing candidates and their activities. Real-time events like the debates caused record conversation levels on Twitter.
NFL and Nascar dominated in the sports category, while Family Guy and Big Brother generated the most conversation about TV shows.
AT&T was the most talked about topic in technology, followed by the iPhone, Instagram, Skype and Kindle. Other trends categories tracked by Twitter included countries, food, music, movies and conversation starters.
Twitter’s New Voices category lists people influential in a number of different ways who joined Twitter in 2012. It spans politics, religion, sports, news, and entertainment; here are a few highlights:
Twitter has broken this category into subsections, with expandable lists that link to each new Twitter profile on the list. See their full coverage here.
This year, Twitter has also partnered with Vizify to offer an interactive infographic service for Twitter users, who can have their own account analyzed for Golden Tweets and trends. Users can then share their top tweets and topics, or the entire infographic, with their own network, as SEW author Bryan Eisenberg did above. Make your own Twitter Year in Review here.
For more information on the people and events that most inspired social conversation on Twitter this year, check out their 2012 Year on Twitter site and have a look at the video highlights below.
You can also revisit Twitter’s hottest topics and trends from 2011 and 2010.