On average, the Twitter community tweets about 250 Million times per day. That is roughly 3,000 tweets every second! A large percentage of users make use of Twitter’s Hashtag feature which essentially groups individual postings with others containing the same hashtag. When enough users post updates with the same hashtag, it has potential to become a ‘trending topic’. These trending topics come from what is being talked about most – celebrities, rumors, just about anything. They are sometimes even used to sum up entire thoughts with simple phrases.

So what are the most popular hashtags being used? The Daily Dot, working with Topsy looked into the most popular English-language hashtags used in the past 12 months. They used a metric called “Momentum” to determine the results, which is described as “a measure of the combined popularity of a link and the speed at which that popularity is increasing.”

The number one hashtag for the past year was “Moscow”. This of course was due to unfair election results in Russia and huge numbers of protestors demanding for a democratic voting system. This also marked the end of Vladimir Putin’s control of Russia. Coming in at number two is London’s Arsenal soccer club. The most noteworthy news; longtime fan and CNN host, Piers Morgan ‘dramatically’ begged start-player Robin van Persie to stay with the team rather than transfer out to a rival club.

Other popular hashtags included “Freedom” which was evident in Tweets about the fourth of July holiday in the United States and about the events in Bahrain. Also used was “what i miss most”, which encouraged users to get reminiscent about their younger years and think about what they miss most about being a kid.

It is clear that Twitter certainly isn’t just for a particular kind of audience, but rather has something for everyone. If enough people are passionate about a topic, it too will likely become a trending hashtag – if not only for a few hours.

Here is the complete list of most popular hashtags for the past 12 months:

1) #moscow

2) #arsenal

3) #takemeout

4) #freedom

5) #nadarkhani

6) #whatimissmost

7) #arabidol

8) #waystogetoffthephone

9) #tweetforyoucef

10) #twalculate