Twitter unveiled a look back at some of the most talked about events, most re-tweeted posts, and more of 2012. PC Mag pointed to some of the highlights of the report: President Obama's election night "Four more years" victory tweet featuring a photo of him hugging the First Lady (below) remains the most re-tweeted message of the year. It also broke a record for most retweets ever last month. Popstar Bieber, meanwhile, came in second to the president with a goodbye tweet to a young fan who passed away from brain cancer in September. In a section dubbed the "Pulse of the planet," Twitter took stock of the events that prompted the biggest conversations this year. Not surprisingly, the Summer Olympics were very popular, generating 150 million tweets. "The closing ceremonies (specifically, the Spice Girls' performance) amassed the largest Games-related spike, 116,000+ Tweets per minute," Twitter said. "The largest competition-related conversation: when Jamaica's Usain Bolt (@UsainBolt), most-discussed athlete, won gold in the 200m sprint (80,000 Tweets per minute)." Other sporting events that grabbed people's attention included the Super Bowl (13.7 million tweets), the Euro 2012, and the UEFA Champtions League semi-final. Election Day, meanwhile, prompted more than 31 million tweets, while Superstorm Sandy generated more than 20 million, with many of those messages including the word "donate." The debate over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) - which resulted in a one-day Internet blackout - also had people up in arms on the micro-blogging site. There is plenty more that you can see for yourself in the report. In addition to providing stats about the platform overall, they also teamed up with Vizify to let users visualize their own year on Twitter. All users need to do is visit Vizify's website, click the "Get Yours Now!" link, and sign in with their Twitter account to have an infographic produced that highlights the users most talked-about tweets, and how many responses they created.

On the Meet the Press Press Pass, David Gregory had a really interesting interview with Ben Smith of BuzzFeed about the influence of Social Media on the 2012 election and the media itself.  I would agree with Smith completely when he says: Both campaigns were aggressively engaged on Twitter, adding that campaigning is "basically the communications business.” One of the prime reasons for being engaged so heavily in the medium, Smith argues, is because both sides are interested in “shaping reporters’ first impressions” of events – and Twitter is a venue in which consensus can be built by a few influential members of the press corps that cover the candidates. Not only does the rapid rise of social media help presidential campaigns and the reporters that cover them, Smith said it allows ordinary citizens to join the public discourse as well. "People who had previously been outside could see that conversation and jump into it if they had interesting things to say." Smith noted that for buzzfeed, twitter is their front page. You can see the video of the full interview here, it is worth a watch:

Over at the website socialnomics, they have this video with some pretty amazing statistics about the state of social media, the enormous growth we have seen and the continued increases we will see as we head to 2013. I'll put the statistics from the video below the flip, which are absolutely worth a look if you want to see the unbelievable growth of social media and its impact  on the economy Continue reading

Brian Solis has a great interview with Bryan Srabrian, the San Francisco Giant's first Director of Social Media : It wasn't too long ago when sport industries were confounded by the openness of social media and the ability for fans and players to share experiences in real time. Of course times have changed and teams in every sporting league imaginable are experimenting with social media to improve relationships and experiences with fans. The San Francisco Giants are among the sports teams that are leading the way for a new genre of engagement and community building. You can see the interview and discussion about how the Giants have continued to learn how to best market on the numerous platforms out there to help find a voice and have additional conversations with their fans. Srabrian notes that sports are inherently social and the perfect testing ground for new social media initiatives.  It will be interested to see how professional sports teams attempt to further engage with their fans, supporters and sponsors given the many new touch points for potential communications.