The Arab Spring resonated throughout the world, both for its socio-economic and political impact. It cannot be argued that these movements were helped along by social media, namely Twitter and Facebook. There were also other world events and topics with significantly less gravitas that nonetheless garnered much interest in the social media world.
Twitter has released the most popular hashtags of 2011. Hashtags are popular sayings within Twitter that often contain informative keywords allowing users to classify their tweets and group them accordingly. Twitter defines a hashtag as the following: “The # symbol, called a hashtag, is used to mark keywords or topics in a Tweet. It was created organically by Twitter users as a way to categorize messages.”
Hashtags give us a glimpse into what people were talking about, interested in and compelled to tweet about. Ranging from global politics and events to celebrity gossip, Twitter’s 200 million users showed themselves interested in politically-charged events, topics of personal interest, as well as pop culture.
The most-used hashtag of the year was #Egypt, followed by #Tigerblood in reference to Charlie Sheen’s well-publicized declarations and antics. Personal declarations also took center-stage with #threewordstoliveby, #idontunderstandwhy and #improudtosay making an appearance on the list.
These open-ended hashtags invite users to be witty, insightful or, for better or worse, just declarative in their thoughts. The virtual world united in its support of Japan after March 2011’s devastating earthquake and subsequent tsunami as evidenced by the use of the popular hashtag #japan.
The rest of the list comprised of the perennially popular #superbowl and was rounded out by #jan25, yet another reference to the Egyptian revolution.
What will 2012 bring?
Michelle Mayer is blogger at Mijo! Brands in Mexico.
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