Twitter Releases 2012 Trends

STUDIO CITY (CBSLA.com) — Social media continued to become more dominant in 2012.

Twitter released the site's highlights of the year Tuesday, including the biggest tweets and notable new users.

The top tweet of the year was when President Barack Obama marked his win via Twitter before taking stage to accept his election victory. The picture was retweeted over 810,000 times and favored over 300,000 times. It became not only the most retweeted tweet of 2012, but ever:
https://twitter.com/BarackObama/statuses/266031293945503744
The second was by singer Justin Bieber.

The performer responded to the death of 6-year-old Avalanna Routh who suffered from a rare form of brain cancer.

It had over 220,000 retweets and was favored over 100,000 times.

The social media site became a platform for users to explore firsts.

James Cameron, Hollywood director, became the first person to tweet from 35,755 feet under the sea.
https://twitter.com/JimCameron/statuses/184036733959143425
Twitter was also used for current event discussions. The top conversations of the year included:

150 million tweets were generated during the 16-day Summer Games in London, and a peak of 327,452 tweets per minute were sent as news organizations tallied the results on Election Day.

Pope Benedict XVI became a new Twitter user at the beginning of December. Tuesday, the day before he is expected to send his first tweet, he had over 620,000 followers.

His English Twitter handle, @Pontifex, is the main account but is connected (and is following) his seven other accounts, which is where he is expected to send the same tweets in different languages.