As the year comes to a close Twitter wants you to take a trip down memory lane.
The company released its annual #YearOnTwitter report, revealing the obvious: When big things happen, we head to Twitter. People sent more than 500 million tweets per day, according to Twitter Chief Communications Officer Gabriel Stricker.
And when it came to the most popular tweet, Ellen DeGeneres reigned supreme.
If only Bradley’s arm was longer. Best photo ever. #oscars pic.twitter.com/C9U5NOtGap
— Ellen DeGeneres (@EllenDeGeneres) March 3, 2014
Back during the Oscars broadcast, DeGeneres asked people watching to make a selfie she sent out with more than a dozen celebrities the most popular tweet in Twitter history, and while she didn’t break the Internet with it, she did briefly break Twitter. It ended up getting over 3.3 million retweets. The word “selfie” was mentioned more than 92 million times this year.
You can also view other top moments from 2014 and how Twitter looked according to some of its biggest celebrity users.
The biggest event of the year on Twitter easily eclipsed DeGeneres’ selfie heard around the world, however. That would be the World Cup, a global tournament that easily took over Twitter for weeks on end and had people who normally didn’t care about soccer tweeting. At its peak, people sent 618,725 tweets per minute when Germany won the championship. (The World Cup was the biggest moment for Facebook as well.)
Sports, entertainment, and politics easily took over the conversation with the biggest topics of the year. People couldn’t stop talking about #BringBackOurGirls, which caught fire after Boko Haram kidnapped more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls, #IndyRef, which largely affected Scotland but sparked a worldwide debate, and the Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong.
Our prayers are with the missing Nigerian girls and their families. It’s time to #BringBackOurGirls. -mo pic.twitter.com/glDKDotJRt
— First Lady- Archived (@FLOTUS44) May 7, 2014
#BlackLivesMatter overtook Twitter in recent weeks following grand jury decisions not to indict Darren Wilson and Daniel Pantaleo for killing Michael Brown and Eric Garner, respectively, along with police shooting 12-year-old Tamir Rice for holding a toy gun. It’s been used more than 18 million times so far, and that number is likely to grow.
Double click to interact.
Illustration by Jason Reed
