The top Twitter trends of 2013

Britain has been revealed as a nation of sporting fans, according to yearly stats from Twitter, which found that three of the top ten traffic spikes were down to sporting moments.

Also in the top ten of 2013 were the birth of the royal baby, Miley Cyrus’s raunchy dancing and the election of Pope Francis. 2013 was also the year that members of boy band One Direction took to Twitter – and amassed three of the most popular tweets of the year.

But the world’s most popular message tweet, which peaked at 408,000 retweets, came from Glee star Lea Michele (@msleamichele) who thanked fans for their support following the death of her partner and co-star Cory Monteith.

Twitter continued to be the platform for fast-breaking news, from protests in Turkey to the first reports of chemical attacks in Syria and more than 27 million Tweets were sent as the world discussed the Boston bombings in April.

And according to Twitter’s blog, it was also used to pay tribute to those who had passed away, including former Poet Laureate Seamus Heaney, author Iain Banks, ex-Sopranos star James Gandolfini and recently, Nelson Mandela.

2013 was also the year that @ManUtd joined Twitter, along with @MontyPython, @gazzaofficial and @TheDukeOfYork.

Top 10 Twitter topics, rated by tweets per second:

March 5: Manchester United are beaten 2-1 by Real Madrid, knocking them out of the Champions League.
January 1: Revellers take to Twitter to celebrate the new year.
July 13: Andy Murray wins Wimbledon, making him the first male British singles champion since Fred Perry in 1936.
June 2: England draw 2-2 with Brazil in a friendly in a match that marked the official reopening of the Maracana stadium.
April 30: Real Madrid beat Borussia Dortmund 2-0 in the Champions League semi-final second leg, but are knocked out of the competition on aggregate.
May 11: Wigan win the FA Cup Final, the first major trophy in their history.
August 14: England beat Scotland 3-2 in an international friendly at Wembley.
April 23: Bayern Munich beat Barcelona 4-0 in the first leg of the Champions League semi-final.
June 30: Mumford and Sons close the Glastonbury Festival, with a special appearance on stage from The Vaccines and Vampire Weekend to sing The Beatles classic With a Little Help From My Friends.
October 15: England beat Poland 2-0, qualifying for a place in the Brazil 2014 World Cup.