As the year-end best-of lists continue to roll in, Twitter is making their foray in chronicling 2012 with an impressive new round-up site called “2012 Year on Twitter.” The site features a series of top metrics as well as more in depth features about stories that played out on Twitter this year. You can access the year-in-review portal here.
Twitter’s year-in-review hub highlights top tweets, trends, stories, and famous newcomers to the site over the past 12 months. The first section, “Golden Tweets,” highlights the most popular tweets of the year, in terms of retweets and favorites. For instance, you may remember that President Obama’s “four more years” tweet he sent out as the election was decided is the top tweet of the year. Not only that, but it’s the most popular tweet in the history of Twitter. Justin Bieber and the Green Bay Packers’ TJ Lang also had very popular tweets in 2012.
Twitter also highlights the top trends, split into categories. For example, the top “conversation starter” this year was the hashtag #nowplaying. The top trending sports tag was #nfl, and the top trending political tag was #tcot. It shoudn’t surprise anyone that the most talked about country in 2012 was #syria.
Twitter’s year-in-review page also showcases all the new faces that joined Twitter in 2012 – from the realms of TV, movies, politics, music, religion/culture, and more. There are also sections called “Pulse of the Planet” and “Only on Twitter” which look at stories and conversation that happend on the network.
“Every day, we’re amazed and humbled by the many ways in which people use Twitter, which range from simply retweeting to igniting conversations with hashtags (even around lesser-known topics) to sharing spectacular and far-flung views. In 2012, everyone on Twitter brought us closer to moments and places that used to be far away or inaccessible: A Tweet from the bottom of the ocean. Tweets from Mars. An extraordinary view from space of Superstorm Sandy. A quiet backstage moment with a presidential candidate. All of these and millions of other such moments were ours to experience directly wherever we were, in the midst of work or play or travel,” says Twitter.