2012 was a year of Tweets and how! Whether it was the President of the United States or the most popular singer of the moment, every body made their presence felt through Twitter. Sometimes to experience sheer happiness, sometimes to just vent out anger or grief. At times even a bit of controversy came up. Remember? But whatever it was, there is no denying that Twitter actually became the spokesperson for celebrities and the common man alike. It became a voice that was heard over and over again. As we welcome the new year let us revisit the most popular tweets of the year gone by. Here you go! President Obama comments on his reelection Before he took the stage to affirm his election victory, President Obama marked his win via Twitter....

By the time you finish reading this sentence millions of changes would have happened in the digital world. Yes, it’s that rapidly evolving. And while we can’t really ever predict what is the ‘next-big-thing,’ we can check out some key insights from ‘digital gurus’ across the world. Customers are constantly changing. Marketeers need to change. Digital as you know it is already dead. Long live digital.

I recently bumped into a friend who seemed to be a mobile phone addict. She kept using her phone for the entire length of conversation. In fact anything I asked her, she helplessly looked into her smart phone for an answer (reminding me of my kindergarten days when all questions asked to me were gleefully directed towards my mother to answer). Though I love gadgets and have quite a few of them, I was amazed by her dependence on smartphones and its applications and thought her to be one off case. However, my belief was short-lived when I read about Mobile App Addiction Rehab Center in California. Yes, there is something like that too! With App addiction on the rise, I think, the day is not far when mankind may simply surrender to the hands...

November 21, 2012, Ajmal Kasab hanged at 7.30am in Pune’s Yerwada Jail. It is said justice delayed is justice denied. But if I look at Kasab’s hanging after a good four years, I feel justice has been delivered. Though it doesn’t wash away the horrific memories of 26/11 from our minds, the news brings a bit of relief to people, especially to the survivors. While there was no minute to minute coverage of this news (and I am glad about that), one place that always keeps buzzing was, well, buzzing, even this time around. Social media experienced a wave of happiness, almost as if it was a personal achievement, a target met, for each of us. Here is a glimpse of the data Reputome revealed to me: With 18720 mentions, Twitter enjoyed the...

Balasaheb Thackery, the Shiv Sena leader as we all know was never afraid to speak his mind. Soon after his demise, in a democratic country like ours, a young 21 year old girl Shaheen Dhada did just that. Spoke her mind. She did it on Facebook, fearlessly, openly displaying her reaction on Mumbai bandh following the leader’s death. Her comment said – People like Thackeray are born and die daily and one should not observe a bandh for that. Judge for yourself, does this warrant an arrest? To add to it, a friend who ‘liked’ her comment was also arrested for this anti-Bal Thackery post. The girl in question apologized and withdrew her comment. Even then a mob of Shiv Sena workers attacked and ransacked her uncle’s orthopedic...

Bad news travels fast. Perhaps faster than light or anything else you can imagine. But what happens if the bad news that breaks is about the demise of the maverick leader of Shiv Sena, Balasaheb Thackery via the medium of Social Media? Then the demise turns into an unforgettable event, even on social media. There was a flood of Tweets and Posts that followed the death of the Shiv Sena Supremo on November 17, 2012. I am sure we have read a lot of those, but I have still posted a few tweets here. I fetched some data from Reputome (the smart tool that effectively monitors, manages and measures reputation of companies and brands) and it said that on an average the sentiments were fairly negative. Though the top location for Tweets was India...