In 2014 Indians have expressed a lot in 140 characters. They shared information in short bursts, usually, in real-time. Followers became influencers; influencers expanded their spheres. And they have started tweeting from Mars, too. Gone are those heydays when #FollowBack used to be the most trending topic of the week. In 2014, India has grown at a rate of one new hashtag per day. #YearOnTwitter in India This year, as the phrase goes, the people have spoken! They chose a leader with a voice. A leader who could do away with the tag: developing country. Narendra Damodardas Modi ascended to the post of prime minister. His first tweet after winning the 2014 General Election became the most retweeted in India with over 70 thousand retweets. @narendramodi is currently the second most followed account across the globe among world leaders. He has also featured in two of the top five peaks in Twitter conversations in 2014. Modi aside, Indians are nine times more involved in cricket and Bollywood than politics. Every timeline, even the hardest of Modi critics, is peppered with news, opinions about India's great obsession. With the stand-in Indian captain, Virat Kohli, diminishing the lines between the two, the Twitter grapevine has remained in an overdrive ever since. Without much further ado let's look at the the top peaks in Twitter conversation, top hashtags and the most followed accounts in India. Top 10 Peaks in Twitter Conversation among Indians Rohit Sharma giving the Sri Lankans a pasting was something beyond even the matter shifting, time altering, physics of the 'Invincible' Superstar Rajnikanth. At least four of the top 10 conversations saw users moving from one controversy to another. Top 10 fastest-rising Twitter hashtag trends in India Surprisingly, Cricket or Bollywood did not feature in the top 10 trending Hashtags. Football dominated the top 5 trends, a clear indication that there is a paradigm shift in preferences of Indians. And in politics, at a time when the BJP were credited for their social media strategy in connecting with the voters, they don't feature in the top 10 trends. #QuitAAP and #MufflerMan, like two sides of a coin, show the ups and downs of the fledgling Aam Aadmi Party. Top 20 Most-Followed Indian Twitter accounts This 70s star is 72 years old. And he is perched on top of the Twitter branch. With over 11 million followers - three million more than the prime minister of the country - Amitabh Bachchan is the Bademiyan of Twitter India. A little lower down the branch, we see that Deepika Padukone has settled the debate over who is the most courted actress in the film industry. Further down, we can see that Virat Kohli is a few thousand followers away from over taking Sachin Tendulkar on Twitter if not on the field. 2014 will be remembered as a year when Indians never ran out of characters (1/3) (2/3) they stretched the 140 handicap to share their opinions, ideas, interests (3/3) and, always, had an answer to Twitter's "What's happening?".
