2014 has been a crazy year for social media, worldwide we sent 500 million tweets a day, and there's been plenty of good, plenty of bad and plenty of inspirational and as it draws to an end, we look back at the top trends and stories that gripped the social world in 2014.
The world cup
Being English the world cup brings back memories we'd all rather forget for another 4 years, but for a football fan this was one of the best world cups we've seen for a long time, and this showed by the amount of Tweets the world cup received. Worldwide 672 million Tweets were sent about the world cup finals, becoming Twitter's most tweeted about event in its history, not surprising considering some of the goals and Germany trouncing Brazil 7-1 in the semi finals.

Selfies
As much as taking a picture of your face becoming a trend perplexes me, it happened this year *sigh*. With selfie being mentioned 92 million times on Twitter, it's not surprising it's a top trend of 2014. Not to mention Ellen DeGeneres' Oscar selfie, which was retweeted more than 3 million times, making it the most retweeted tweet ever!

The Queens first ever tweet
Being British we are all quite patriotic about our Royal family, and it was the Queen's foray into the social media that had us all talking. The Queens tweet was retweeted 36,000 times, pretty good for a woman of 88, my Nan struggles to operate the TV.
It is a pleasure to open the Information Age exhibition today at the @ScienceMuseum and I hope people will enjoy visiting. Elizabeth R.
— BritishMonarchy (@BritishMonarchy) October 24, 2014
Comet landing
Something that, for all us nerds out there, had us gripped, was the Philae space probe landing on the Rosetta comet, a feat we can all agree to be astonishing. It's a big deal right? Well, this prompted the hashtag "#WeCanLandOnACometButCant" about all the things we haven't managed to achieve, including:
#WeCanLandOnACometButWeCant Stop an elderly man infiltrating our space station & turning the tractor beam off. pic.twitter.com/FSOEUpSB9a
— Darth Vader No1™ (@DarthVader_No1) November 13, 2014
#WeCanLandOnACometButWeCant even
— Call me TJ (@TonyJWriter) November 12, 2014
#WeCanLandOnACometButWeCant work out a solution to unidentified item in the bagging area
— Tom Scorza (@TomScorza) November 13, 2014
#WeCanLandOnACometButWeCant Believe It's Not Butter
— AdorkableMeestletoe (@CTL50) November 12, 2014
#WeCanLandOnACometButWeCant get Leo an oscar pic.twitter.com/Up2WQQ7rwx
— van Berge Dan den (@theBasedDan) November 12, 2014
Robin Williams
As much as I'd like to say 2014 was a year of celebration, I can't, as it was also a year of mourning. As the news broke about Robin Williams death, millions took to social media to offer their condolences. A personal childhood hero too many, including myself, he had been suffering from severe depression. However, what the world took from such a huge loss, is that we need to pay more attention and place more significance on treating mental illness, I believe this to be a great message to take from such a sad story of 2014.

Ebola
A major story of 2014 was the outbreak of Ebola in East Africa, with the virus claiming thousands of lives, it goes without saying that social media was awash with people talking about the virus. On Twitter Ebola was mentioned in 10.5 million Tweets between September and October, and when the Virus reached America users were mentioning Ebola an average of 6,000 times a minute!
ALS Ice bucket challenge
ALS or motor neurone disease as its frequently more well known as in the UK, is an extremely debilitating disease that didn't necessarily get the publicity other diseases receive. However, this all changed this year with the ALS ice bucket challenge, where people around the world, even myself, dumped freezing cold water over their heads for charity. This quickly snowballed on social media as most people's social media newsfeeds were saturated with cold and soggy fundraisers, in fact 2.4 million videos in the UK were posted on Facebook here are some of the best.
Apple Mishaps
Apple had a bit of an up and down year, as you may have noticed on social media. It first began with a massive leak of celebrity nude photos including, celebrities including Jennifer Lawrence, Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting, Kirsten Dunst etc from apple's supposedly "secure" iCloud service, many celebrities took to social media to vent their frustration at the situation, and many took to social media to see the photos. All this happened just a few weeks before the release of the much-anticipated iPhone 6. Apple were also hit with another social media embarrassment, with #Bendgate. Videos and reports started flooding in about how easy it was to bend the new iPhone 6, while Apple only reported 9 cases of it happened, this didn't stop the vast numbers of people and even brands taking to social media to mock the Tech giant, you can see some of the best tweets here.
Scotland Independence
For many in the UK, Scottish independence was a hot button topic, with strong feelings and views being held on either side. Combined, there were 3.3 million posts, comments and likes about the referendum on polling day, with 10 million posts altogether throughout the campaigning.
Malaysia airlines disasters
2014 is a year I am sure Malaysia airlines and everyone affected by the disasters wants to put behind them. In March this year Malaysian airlines flight MH370 mysteriously went missing, resulting in widespread commentary from people on social media, the hashtag #MH370 was the most tweeted hashtag for a news event on Twitter. If this wasn't bad enough for the airline, another Malaysian Airways plane was shot down over Ukraine in July, thus creating a media frenzy about the growing struggle in Crimea and the 283 people who lost their lives on board. Combined the Malaysian Airlines disasters were one of the most talked about stories on both social media and Google with over 200 million searches on Google for flight MH370.
Fixing the internet
As much as I don't want to give Kim Kardashian any more attention than she already has, it seems while other celebrities were trying to cover up their leaked naked pictures, Kim Kardashian was reportedly getting paid $43 million dollars to take her clothes off. Ridiculous we agree with you, but it appears that not everyone wanted to see her arse plastered over the internet (who knew, right?). The original article titled "Break the internet" got a little bit of Photoshop magic from you lovely people out there on the internet, with the new fitting title #FixTheInternet. Here are some of our favourites.
Just saved the Internet. You're welcome. #FixTheInternet pic.twitter.com/NcdjYh8LE5
— Superman (@SupermanTweets) November 13, 2014
.@midnight #FixTheInternet by filling its holes with Pizza like I do with my heart: pic.twitter.com/bwkDn6LMQB
— Donovan Strain (@DonovanStrain) November 13, 2014
#FixTheInternet pic.twitter.com/RVvE2X3P3i
— OG Pennywise (@PennyTheGOAT) November 13, 2014
Good Night Twitter 😂😫😂 #FixTheInternet not #BreakTheInternet pic.twitter.com/VsvhvSigon
— SKIWO (@Skiwo) November 13, 2014
There we go #BreakTheInternet #FixTheInternet pic.twitter.com/LG26hnlgtA
— Cody Labelle (@labelle_cody) November 12, 2014
The world has seen a lot of ups and downs over the past year, it was hard to compile all of them in one article, but we hope you'll agree we picked the ones that were most memorable (some silly ones as well), if you can think of any more, let us know in the comments section below!
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