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Annual Review 2014 Katy Perry One Direction

World Cup the most tweeted event in history, reveals Twitter in annual round-up

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By Ishbel Macleod, PR and social media consultant

December 10, 2014 | 3 min read

It’s been a record-breaking year on Twitter, the company revealed in its annual round-up, with the World Cup becoming the most tweeted about event ever and Ellen DeGeneres’ Oscar selfie revealed as the most retweeted tweet in the site's history.

But DeGeneres was not the only one to take a selfie this year. Since 1 January 2014, the term ‘selfie’ has been mentioned more than 92 million times on Twitter - a 500 per cent increase and 12 times more than in 2013.

Looking back at what happened in 2014, Twitter found that a record 672 million tweets were sent about this year’s World Cup finals in Brazil, and that eight of the top 10 tweeted about moments of 2014 in the UK were sports related.

The only two non-sports subjects that made the list were New Year, as users sent their well-wishes, and when One Direction won the Best British Video Award at the Brits.

As well as the most talked about moments, Twitter also revealed the most used hashtags in different areas, including sports (topped by #WorldCup), news (led by the Missing Malaysia Airlines flight #MH370) and TV (led by #xfactor).

World or hashtags trend when there is a notable spikes in conversation about the subject.

Twitter noted that trends don’t give any indication of sentiment — when something trends, that simply means it has captured the UK’s attention, not that it was necessarily a hit.

Awards were another area looked at in the trending chart, with a split between acting and music awards.

It is the musicians who seem to have taken over Twitter itself, with the majority of the most followed Twitter users list being musicians.

Worldwide, Katy Perry leads the way with 61m followers, while Justin Bieber stands at 57m. Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake and Rhianna also made the top 10 worldwide.

In the UK, One Direction dominated the chart, while Emma Watson and BBC Breaking News were the only non-musicians to make the list.

Yesterday, Facebook revealed the most talked about subjects it had seen this year- with thr World Cup also being a huge conversation point on that platform.

Annual Review 2014 Katy Perry One Direction

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