Wednesday 10 December 2014

The year of the 'Selfie'...

Oscar Selfie
In case you hadn't already realised, it's the year of the selfie.
That's according to Twitter's top trends of 2014. Ellen DeGeneres' star-stuffed Oscar photo was retweeted more than three million times - a Twitter record.
The generic term "selfie" was mentioned more than 92 million times on Twitter - 12 times more than last year. 
Not to brag or anything, but BBC Trending - and the Oxford English Dictionary - were ever so slightly ahead of the curve. This time last year we looked at the psychology of the selfie.
In 2014, we've covered (among others) a hair-pulling video selfie, the rise of #nomakeupselfie, and protesters in Egypt reacting to a selfieposted by former president Hosni Mubarak.
The World cup became the most Tweeted about event in history
Outside the world of front-facing camera lenses, the World Cup was the biggest Twitter event of the year - 672 million tweets were sent about this year's finals in Brazil. 
The World Cup also figured on Facebook's list of top trends (for some reason top social media companies seem to discount the last three weeks of the year). 
Feats like Robin van Persie's famous header enthralled the social media world and resulted in bizarre spectacles such as BBC Trending's Anne-Marie Tomchak balancing on a traffic barrier in the middle of London.
Hitting the second slot on Facebook was the Ebola epidemic, despite the fact that a lot of online talk in West Africa is happening on chat apps, rather than on more public platforms.
Elections in Brazil, the charity "ice bucket challenge" and the conflict in Gaza also reached the top 10.
As a global trend, however, the selfie reigns supreme. So if - like many others - you are annoyed by the craze for self-photography, just take a deep breath and wait for 2015.

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