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Social media of the year

With nine days to go until Christmas advertising breaks are crammed with festive imagery and the shops are teeming with people trying to tick the countless items off their present lists. Meanwhile, supplements, magazines, and websites present their obligatory ‘Best of 2011’ features, with the finest albums of the annum, the biggest celebrity shockers, and the highest grossing films all, of course, present and correct.
It’s the same in social media land too, as both Facebook and Twitter recently revealed the most talked about stories to have been shared on the respective networks over the last 12 months. For those that missed them, the world population reaching 1billion claimed the top spot for the former, while the ‘Mac App Store’ was the tech topic the most Brits tweeted on. Enough introductions though, we’ve listed the key stats below, so let’s leave the rest of the talking to the facts.

Facebook’s Best of 2011

Top 20 Shared Stories (UK)

1. BBC: The World at Seven Billion
2. The Sun: Tatt-poo for cheating
3. The Guardian: The shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy
4. BBC: Amy Winehouse: Tributes paid to dead singer
5. BBC: Austrian driver allowed ‘pastafarian’ headgear photo
6. The Guardian: Charlie Sheen v Muammar Gaddafi: whose line is it anyway?
7. The Guardian: The meaning of 9/11?s most controversial photo
8. Daily Mail: Amy Winehouse, 27, found dead at her London flat
9. BBC: Drunk Swedish elk found in apple tree near Gothenburg
10. BBC: ‘Brinicle’ ice finger of death filmed in Antarctic
11. Daily Mail: Robber who broke into hair salon is beaten by its black-belt owner and kept as a sex slave for three days…fed only Viagra
12. The Sun: Frankie Cocozza kicked off X Factor
13. BBC: Japan earthquake: Footage of moment tsunami hit
14. BBC: Osama Bin Laden, al-Qaeda leader, dead – Barack Obama
15. The Guardian: Osama bin Laden corpse photo is fake
16. BBC: Japan earthquake: Tsunami hits north-east
17. BBC: Speed-of-light results under scrutiny at Cern
18. BBC: Arrest over video of ‘racist rant’ on Croydon to Wimbledon tram
19. Daily Mail: Heart-breaking photo shows Navy SEAL’s dog guarding his coffin
20. BBC: LIVE: Osama Bin Laden dead
(Source: The Next Web)

Top 10 UK Status Update Topics

1. Royal Wedding
2. UK riots
3. The Only Way Is Essex
4. Death of Amy Winehouse
5. Death of Osama bin Laden
6. Death of Muammar Gaddafi
7. Jessie J
8. Ed Sheeran
9. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
10. Reem

Top 10 Global Topics

1. Death of Osama bin Laden
2. Green Bay Packers win NFL Superbowl
3. Casey Anthony found not guilty
4. Charlie Sheen
5. Death of Steve Jobs
6. Royal Wedding
7. Death of Amy Winehouse
8. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
9. Libya
10. Hurricane Irene
(Source: Facebook 2011 Memology)

Twitter’s Hot Topics of 2011

#Hashtags

1. #egypt
2. #tigerblood
3. #threewordstoliveby
4. #idontunderstandwhy
5. #japan

Television

1. Pretty Little Liars
2. Two and a Half Men
3. The Craigslist Killer
4. Golden Globe Awards
5. People’s Choice Awards

Movies

1. Thor
2. The Dark Knight Rises
3. X-Men: First Class
4. Fast Five
5. Green Hornet

Music

1. Rebecca Black and Friday
2. Nate Dogg
3. FEMME FATALE
4. Gerry Rafferty
5. Gil Scott-Heron

Actresses

1. Elizabeth Taylor
2. Mila Kunis
3. Anne Hathaway
4. Raven Symone
5. Natalie Portman

Actors

1. Charlie Sheen
2. Macaulay Culkin
3. Ryan Dunn
4. Ricky Gervais
5. Pete Postlethwaite

Football

1. Wayne Rooney
2. Fernando Torres
3. Howard Webb
4. Wembley Stadium
5. Colo Colo

Food & Drink

1. McLobster
2. Fried Kool-Aid
3. Starbucks Trenta
4. Devassa Beer
5. Guinness

World News

1. Mubarak’s resignation
2. Raid on Osama bin Laden
3. Japanese earthquake and Fukushima nuclear disaster
4. Shooting of Gabrielle Giffords
5. Gaddafi’s death

Cities & Countries

1. Cairo
2. Egypt
3. Japan
4. Libya
5. Tokyo

Technology

1. Mac App Store
2. Sony NGP
3. Guitar Hero
4. Mozilla Firefox
5. Duke Nukem Forever
(Source: Twitter Year In Review)

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