Tag Archives: Charlie sheen

Planking and the census the viral hits of Facebook in 2011

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The social barometer that is Facebook has released its most talked about topics for 2011.

‘Facebook Memology’ “takes the pulse of the global community by unearthing the most popular topics and cultural trends – or memes – emerging on Facebook.”

The data shows the top ten Facebook status trends for 2011 by key countries and globally, as well as fastest growing Pages (from musician and actor categories) and most popular media on a global level. Most talked about brands and most successful brand Pages were not made available by Facebook. The most shared items of the year globally were published on Mashable, but unavailable at a local level.

Planking, where people lie face down in unusual locations, was the runaway viral success (for society? – Ed) in Australia for the year, topping the Facebook meme list and ranking third amongst ‘what is…’ searches on Google’s most searched queries for 2011.

Status updates mentioning planking exploded in May. According to Facebook, that happened after Max Key, the son of New Zealand Prime Minister John Key, posted a Facebook photo of himself planking in the family lounge with his father in the background. The stickiness of the phenomenon appears to have originated from a well connected source.

The campaign for the 2011 Australian census also registered as a success, elevating the event into third place on the meme list. Central to the engagement campaign around the survey was ‘Spotlight’, an interactive tool that published a personalised infographic to the user’s Facebook wall.

Top global topics on Facebook

Events in the UK and US had the greatest influence on the global memology. The most talked about event of the year was the death of Osama bin Laden, the biggest sports event was the Super Bowl and the biggest product launch for 2011 (and all time) was for video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

Charlie Sheen captured people’s attention in March, when his trademark ‘winning’, ‘tiger blood’ and ‘goddesses’ memes took off.

The marriage of Kate Middleton and Prince William dominated the conversation in April, with mentions of the phrase ‘Royal Wedding’ shooting up nearly 600-fold in the days running up to their wedding day.

And the year was also marked by outpourings of sadness and memories after the deaths of Amy Winehouse in July and Steve Jobs in October.

 

Homepage image courtesy of Budgetplaces, via Flickr

Twitter’s top trends of 2011

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Twitter is counting down to the end of 2011 with a five-part Year In Review website: a snapshot of the year that lists the trends and happenings in, as well as notable joinings to, the world of Twitter.

It began on December 1 with stories made possible through the microblogging platform such as Shohaib Athar inadvertently live-tweeting the raid on the Osama bin Laden compound in Pakistan.

December 2 brought a list of notable joinings to the Twittersphere, from tennis star Roger Federer, to the president of South Africa, to the US Secret Service.

And December 5 saw the revealing of the hottest topics to be tweeted about over the past year. As well as lists of the most discussed entertainment, sport, technology and world event topics, Twitter revealed 2011′s top eight hashtags:

  1. #egypt – Social media played a notable role in the pro-democracy protests and uprisings in Egypt earlier this year, with the #egypt hashtag being attached to rallying cries as well as calls of support from all over the world.
  2. #tigerblood – Despite zoology’s claims to the contrary, Charlie Sheen’s assertion that he possesses tiger blood, giving him superhuman powers, caught on.
  3. #threewordstoliveby – In which Twitter users list the three words they hold to be very important in their lives.
  4. #idontunderstandwhy – In which Twitter users list something they don’t understand. Obviously. Often about the opposite sex.
  5. #japan – The massive participation in social media in the aftermath of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster showed Twitter’s potential in emergency situations, as well as being used to deliver messages of support from around the world.
  6. #improudtosay – In a similar vein to number three, users tweet something they’re proud of.
  7. #superbowl – The Superbowl was popular on Twitter. Enough said.
  8. #jan25 – January 25 was the day Wael Ghonim became a symbol for the Egyptian democracy movement (see 1) after being detained and presciently predicting the role of the internet in the movement and in activism in general.

 

Part four includes stats on peaks seen in the number of tweets per second over the year, climaxing at 8868 tweets per second during the MTV Video Music Awards on August 28.

The fifth and final part of Twitter’s Year In Review is yet to be revealed…