With 2013 drawing to a close there is no better way to remember the big events of the year than to check Twitter and see what we’ve all been talking about….
Celebrity Deaths
2013 saw the passing of a couple of high profile celebrities and with the world of Twitter and celebrity so closely linked it is no surprise that the death of Glee star Cory Monteith and Fast & Furious actor Paul Walker top the list as the two most popular tweets of 2013.
Monteith’s girlfriend Lea Michele’s tweet regarding his death had over 396,000 retweets and 393,000 favourites. Fellow Glee star Michele had kept quiet for two weeks after his death, but her first public statement about the tragedy is the most retweeted post of 2013.
Actor Paul Walker was killed in a car crash at the end of November and the news was broken to the public through his official twitter account. The message was retweeted over 395,000 times and favourited over 100,400 times. It seem a little unsettling to me that a ‘favourite’ tweet can be one that breaks such awful news. Perhaps twitter need to jump on the Facebook ‘sympathise’ bandwagon for 2014.
Celebrity Birthdays
The third most retweeted post of the year (over 367,000 retweets) comes from a member of One Direction (the blond one I think). Of the many newsworthy events that happened in 2013, the one that clearly deserved the most retweets (ahem) is the 20th birthday of Niall from One Direction. It is slowly becoming clear to me that teenage girls run twitter, and therefore the world.
Before I bang my head against my desk in frustration, there are two points which make me feel slightly better:
1. Nothing this year topped last years winner, making the most-retweeted tweet of all time still Barack Obama’s 2012 victory tweet.
2. Kim Kardashian (and her bum) did not feature in the top three.
Other things less important than celebrities
Other things that happened this year yet were less popular than Niall from One Direction were:
- #SB47 There were over 24 million tweets about the 47th Super Bowl, with the hot topics of Beyonce and the power outage. Oh, and the teams that were playing were probably mentioned too.
- #RoyalBaby One of the biggest events to happen this year in the UK was the birth of Prince George of Cambridge. Clarence House managed to double their followers, all of whom were eager for official news on the birth.
- #SFBatkid One of the most heartwarming stories that hit twitter this year was that of San Francisco and 5-year-old leukemia survivor Miles Scott. The Make-A-Wish Foundation turned San Francisco into Gotham City for a day, just as Miles had asked.
- #Horsemeat began trending at the beginning of the year as the Tesco/Aldi/Findus horse meat scandal broke. Twitter was home to much horsing around and a rather special social media fail by Tesco.
- #BostonMarathon and #BostonStrong After the Boston Marathon bombings in April there were more than 27 million tweets posted about the tragedy, including the initial news being broken from The Boston Globe.
- #Pope became popular in March with more than 130,000 tweets a minute about Francis taking over from Benedict XVI.
- #UCLfinal, otherwise known as the Champions League final between Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund, inspired around 5 million tweets globally.
- #MargaretThatcherDead was both celebrated and mourned on twitter with one million tweets on the subject in the first four hours after the news broke.
- #AskAndy was a big hit in early July as fans flooded Wimbledon Champion Andy Murray with questions.
- #ThankYouSirAlex began trending in May when Sir Alex Ferguson resigned from the managers job at Manchester United. The story had more than 1.4 million mentions within the hour that the news broke, and overall the official story has been retweeted and favourited more than 18,000 times.
- #Haiyan #Philippines #Typhoon made the news in November when Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest storms ever recorded, hit the Philippines.
- #LivingTheLegacy #NelsonMandela A talked about topic on Twitter in December has been messages about the death of Nelson Mandela. While 22% of all tweets about Mandela were paying tribute to him, 8% of tweets were either confusion or ridicule of those who were confused. Just to make it clear for those people: Morgan Freeman and Nelson Mandela are not the same person.
Do you think that Lea Michele deserves the most popular tweet of 2013? Think the World Cup draw should’ve made our round up? Disgusted by people not knowing what Nelson Mandela looks like? Let us know what stories got your attention on twitter this year.
