Plus, the stand-out trends, top retweets and most-used emojis
The most followed individual globally on Twitter? Pop powerhouse Katy Perry still reigns supreme. And for the first time Rihanna entered the top five, (@ladygaga, @britneyspears & @jtimberlake were bumped out of the clutch of highest-ranked people in 2015).
The 'top tweeters' list reads like this:
1) Katy Perry (@katyperry) - 78.3 million
2) Justin Bieber (@justinbieber) - 70.5 million
3) Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) - 66.7 million
4) Barack Obama (@BarackObama) - 66.5 million
5) Rihanna (@rihanna) - 53.1 million
According to Twitter, the first half of 2015 belonged to Taylor Swift, and Justin Beiber won the latter half of the year. The buzz surrounding this pair is unstoppable.
This is not to say the majority of posts were celebrity-focused. In the past 12 months Twitter has also continued to establish itself as a go-to platform for sharing news and political opinion. People use the site to pledge solidarity and advocate for causes they believe in. #JeSuisParis and #BlackLivesMatter were the two most popular talking points on Twitter in 2015.
And when words are not enough, emojis are our favourite way of conveying meaning:
Harry Styles (@Harry_Styles) leads the list of most followed people in the UK. He also took the crown for most retweeted tweet of 2015. This got over 718,000 RTs (we’re slightly baffled too):
Barack Obama also penned a post that was retweeted nearly 450,000 times:
And when Caitlyn Jenner joined the platform in 2015, not only did she win more than a million followers in just over four hours, she also authored a tweet that had nearly 260,000 retweets:
Plus, the late Leonard Nimoy (Star Trek's Mr Spock) had his final tweet shared 280,000 times: