It is December. The year 2014 is coming to an end. That time of the year when we want to sit back and rewind. Remember the year which is coming to a close and recollect our best memories of it. And with the social media becoming an essential part of our lives, the year for us won’t get over till we look over some of our favourite networking sites in retrospect and review what went on over those platforms through that period.
The year has not officially ended- there is still another 18 days to go for that. And what if something as huge as Ellen’s Oscar selfie shakes up the social space? Well, though we really can’t rule that out at the moment, let us relive the year as it was on Twitter and YouTube.
Twitter in 2014
Over 500 million tweets a day over this hugely popular site. Though overtaken by Instagram few days back in terms of user base, the huge activity over this site makes sure it cannot be ignored!
Twitter officially declared 2014 as the ‘Year of the Selfie’. The word selfie, which was the Oxford Dictionary’s Word of the year in 2013, was mentioned on the networking site more than 92 million times! That is nearly five times its usage in the year 2103.
A part of that usage (a lion’s share, we are sure) could be attributed to the Oscar selfie by television host Ellen DeGeneres which included Jennifer Lawrence, Channing Tatum, Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, DeGeneres, Kevin Spacey, Bradley Cooper, Brad Pitt, Lupita Nyong’o and her brother and Angelina Jolie (half her face hidden).
If only Bradley's arm was longer. Best photo ever. #oscars pic.twitter.com/C9U5NOtGap
— Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) March 3, 2014
As Ellen shared it on her wall and others in the picture retweeted it, it was picked up and shared by fans of each of the celebs, making it a huge audience. The picture which became famous by the name of Oscar Selfie was retweeted 779,295 times within the first thirty minutes. An hour later, the tweet had got more than a million retweets, beating the record set by Barack Obama in 2012 when he had posted his picture with the title “Four more years” on getting re-elected as the US President in November 2012. So huge was the tweeting frenzy caused by this epic selfie that the Twitter servers crashed that night!
The second most talked about event on the site was the soccer World Cup 2014. It went on to become the most tweeted event in the history of Twitter and, according to the site owners, saw 618,725 tweets being sent every minute when Germany went on to clinch the title.
The Twitterati, besides choosing to be vocal about celebs, games and fun, also took up some serious issues. The most trending topics of the year were:
# BringBackOurGirls: The whole world speaking up against mass kidnapping of Nigerian girls by Boko Haram terrorists.
#UmbrellaRevolution: The pro-democracy protests by the site users against the electoral reforms proposed by the ruling party of Hong Kong.
#IndyRef: The citizens of Scotland responding to the referendum on breaking away from the United Kingdom
#BlackLivesMatter: The public outrage against the death of Eric Garner in New York and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
YouTube in 2014
Dark Horse by Katy Perry was the most viewed music video of the year, followed by Bailando by Enrique Iglesias. Shakira was the only singer occupying TWO slots in the top ten list of trending YouTube videos of 2014 with her hits Cant Remember to Forget you and the World Cup Anthem La La La (Brazil 2014).
The most viewed non-music videos of the year were Mutant Giant Spider Dog, Nike Football and First Kiss. The iPhone Bendgate scandal and 10 hours of walking in NYC as a woman also featured in the top 10 in this category.
Not to forget the ads over the video based site! Both Nike and Budweiser had two ads each in the top ten most watched ads list.
The most viewed commercial over YouTube in 2014 with 98.4 million views was ‘Winner Stays’ by Nike. It was followed by ‘The Last Game’, also by the same company- getting 73.3 million views. Budweiser’s Puppy Love got 53.4 million views and Friends are Waiting got19.5 million views. Other extremely popular commercials include Samsung Note 4 & Always #LikeAGirl.
Together, the ten most watched ads had 425 million views and accounted for more than 1 billion minutes of viewing time (that is nearly1900 years!!), mentions AdWeek.
Among the most watched channels over YouTube in 2014 were the 24 year old Felix Kjellberg’s PewDiePie channel. According to TubeFilter, it got 392.1 million views in September alone. Other hugely popular channels included DisneyCollectorBR, StamphyLongHead, and UnboxTherapy.
So that is how the year went by on these two hugely popular sites. We’ll get back to you with the most talked about events of the year on Facebook and Pinterest soon!
