The Biggest Twitter Trends Of 2009 – What Was The Top Topic?

It being that special time of the year, the end, we are all taking a look back at the last few hundred days. Twitter has given so many people a new voice in the last year, that to ignore what it has to say would be amiss.

WhatTheTrend has compiled a list of the very top Twitter trends of the year, telling us what we all talked about the most. A few people have tried to do similar things, but no other list is as complete and detailed as this one.

So what was the number one trend of 2009? We’ll tell you, but we are going to do a countdown from the top five first.

Clocking in in fifth place: New Moon. We wish that we could start things off differently, but the list is plain: New Moon is the fifth most popular thing that we talked about this year.

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Moving to number four we return to Twitter’s geeky roots, and find [more after the jump] Google Wave. Google Wave of course the hugely popular new internet service from Google, allowing real time collaboration and communication. When the first 100,000 invites were released, people clamored to be let in. All the first people into the beta were given a handful of invites to share. Still, I would guesstimate that half the tweets on Google Wave were broken in two between people trying to get in by begging, and people lost as hell once they got there.

Number three brings us to our only celebrity, Michael Jackson. When Michael bought the farm, or perhaps sold the ranch, the whole world melted down instantly. People from around the nation, and the world all felt the loss sharply. Tweets surrounding his death, the rumors of the causes behind it, his hidden drug addiction, his funeral, and the movie following his death swirled around the internet for weeks. Want to know how big a star Michael was? He was the third most popular topic on Twitter, all year.

Now to the silver medal, we come to a hashtag: #musicmonday. Given that Twitter is all about sharing, it is hardly surprising that one of the top discussions was around sharing what we are listening to. Twitter has grown up from a lifestreaming service, to a wonderful mix of news, opinion, and discussion. But still, we love to share what we are doing. #musicmonday is not going anywhere.

Finally, the number one trend of the year: #iranelection. The unrest in Iran following the stolen election made Twitter buckle under the weight of millions of people tweeting about the protests and violence. It spawned a second wave of action, with millions more on Twitter dying the profiles green in a sign of solidarity with the Iranian protesters.

So there you have it, the top five trends of 2009 on Twitter. You can see the whole list here. Getting geared up for the new year?

Thanks to @nwjerseyliz for the tip.