Top social media moments 2012

Social media platforms, this year more than ever, encouraged individuals to include their personal opinions and participation in the news. Here follow the top stories; many great moments and, sadly, some very horrific ones.

February 11, 2012 - Whitney Houston's accidental drowning death was Google's top search trend, generated more than 10 million tweets and was the third-biggest event on Facebook in 2012.

February 2012 - Pinterest became the third most popular social network on the web, behind Facebook and Twitter and was the fastest ever to reach 10 million users.

March 5, 2012 - Kony 2012 video went viral. The 30 minute video called for peace and ultimately became a phenomenon.  It was shared rapidly and viewed more than 100 million times in just 6 days, making it, at that time, the most viral video ever.

April 2012 - Facebook Bought Instagram. The largest social network shelled out a whopping $1 billion to acquire the photo sharing application. We’re still waiting to find out the reasons behind such price and move.

May 18, Facebook Went Public. The highly anticipated Facebook IPO was all anyone could talk about. In the first few hours, the biggest IPO in Internet history encountered a series of problems, with tens of millions of dollars in trades being wrongly placed.

July 15, 2012 - Gangnam Style. Who doesn’t know Gangnam style? As of today the video has been viewed over 966 million times on YouTube, and is the site's most watched video after surpassing Justin Bieber's single "Baby".

August 2012 - London 2012 Summer Olympics. Twitter, Facebook and other social networks have been a central part of many breaking stories during these Games and this alone may define the 2012's claim to being the first truly social media Olympics.

September 24, 2012 - Kate Middleton’s nude photos sparked social media agitation with over a million searches on Google as well as Facebook shares, Tweet, re-tweets, etc.

October 2, 2012 - NASA’s Curiosity made the 1^st Foursquare Check-in on another planet. NASA has been very active online since the early days of social media. Mars Rover broke many records, one in particular, marking the first Foursquare check-in ever on another planet.

October 4, 2012 - Facebook Hit 1 Billion Users. Great achievement by Facebook. This means one in seven people on Earth are on Facebook. It means that more than the combined total populations of the US, Indonesia, Brazil, and Pakistan, or more than the entire world population in the year 1800, is on Facebook.

October 2012 - Hurricane Sandy became a social media superstorm. American east coast residents living through the storm used social media for various reasons: to inform friends and families, to grieve their losses, to share photographs of the damage (the most instagrammed event to date), and to obtain information pertinent to their neighborhoods.

November 6, 2012 - The U.S. election reached far beyond the American borders to be the most talked-about event on social media this year. President Obama marked his win via Twitter. Within hours, this photo on Tweeter became the most retweeted of 2012 with 810,000+ Retweets and 300,000+ Favorites.

December 14, 2012 - Social media is boiling with talk about the school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut. The tragedy is drawing many new voices to social media debates where the common themes are gun control and school security. This should be a wakeup call for many.