As people gathered with their nearest and dearest on Christmas Day, Twitter was a hub of activity with people sharing their Christmas experience with their extended social networks. Topsy tells us that 7 million tweets were sent.
We’ve analysed data from Instar Social and found that the most popular time to tweet was 9pm – which was possibly the point that people had had enough of their family and they just wanted to crash out in front of the television.
The most popular TV programmes drove people onto Twitter en masse. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the ever-cheerful Eastenders Christmas special won the crown of most tweeted about programme on Christmas day with more than 108,000 tweets sent during the show. That was more than the rest of the top 10 combined.
Downton Abbey, Alan Carr: Chatty Man and Coronation Street were the commercial TV winners on Twitter with more than 20,000 tweets sent during the programmes. Films also made an appearance on the most tweeted list with Back to the Future, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and GoldenEye sending people online.
Alongside TV, one of the biggest trends on Christmas Day was ‘family’, which was mentioned almost 300,000 times. British families are evolving, which is highlighted by our collaborative ‘Future of Families’ research with TimeInc that repositions the concept of family as well as unveiling unique information about the modern way of British life.
It’s clear that dual screening is becoming the norm with mobiles and tablets a prominent feature of the family living room. Next week we will be sharing what people were searching for on the second screen – the results might surprise you…