The top 15 trending brands on Twitter according to HootSuite [Infographic]

With 2012 now well underway, we don’t want to dwell much more on what happened last year. You can click here if you want to see The Next Web’s 2011 Tech: Rewind posts.

However, HootSuite, the social media management dashboard, has shared its final top Twitter trends for 2011, following on from its previous part 1 Twitter trends.

This one focuses largely on brands and businesses, with a handful of obvious inclusions and a few surprises to boot – for example, MySpace was at number 7.

The list was compiled using an algorithm that awards points based on the rank and duration spent in the top 10. The data used in this series was compiled by What the Trend – a HootSuite Media company – covering over 500,000 trends which appeared on Twitter.com. If you’re interested, this infographic also includes the top trending topics, hashtags, memorials, and holidays last year.