The Year On Twitter

Two kinds of people used Twitter in 2014. That's our crude summary of the data the social media giant has released from the past 12 months: people either used tweets to react to shared experiences (the World Cup) or battered on the virtual door of celebrities for a follow back (One Direction). 

The Golden Tweet of the UK (awarded to the 140 characters that received the most retweets) went to a fairly bland message from One Direction's Harry Styles celebrating the band's four years together - generating a staggering 359,422 tweets. He didn't even include the right number of full stops in his ellipsis...  

Beyond the virtual shores of the UK, Ellen DeGeneres managed to dwarf Styles' figures, amassing an improbable 3,367,874 retweets of the now infamous Oscar selfie. 

Brazil's World Cup was the most discussed topic of the year, both globally and in the UK: over the month of the competition, 672 million tweets mentioned the competition, peaking at 618,725 tweets per minute when Germany beat Argentina 1-0 to win the top prize - Lukas Podolski's pitch selfie neatly summarising proceedings:

Despite England's lacklustre performance, six World Cup matches made up the ten most-discussed events in the UK - topped by Brazil's 7-1 humiliation at the hands of Germany on 8 July. 

While the biggest footballing competition and a four-year anniversary were clearly focal points, 2014's most discussed topics in the UK followed the pattern set down in 2013, which also saw football and One Direction dominate the top ten. 

Welcome Juan Mata see you all tuesday pic.twitter.com/pousQZ33Qn

— Robin van Persie (@Persie_Official) January 25, 2014

The largest significant change in behaviour was the growth of the selfie, with worldwide stats indicating the word had been mentioned 92 million times - an increase of 500 percent on 2013.

As for personal followings, Katy Perry is on to finish the year with the largest number of followers at 61 million - quite a few more than Justin Bieber (57 million) and a lot more than Barack Obama (51 million). 

You can dig down into the statistics and flash points of 2014 on Twitter with the site's new retrospective site. And give us a follow back, yeah?