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One Direction, Caitlyn Jenner, Solidarity and ‘The Dress' Rule Twitter in 2015

As the last days of 2015 fade away, 'tis the season for reflection on the past year. For Twitter, that means analyzing hashtags, trends and retweets and compiling a list of top moments for the year on the social media platform.

Twitter's "Most Influential" moments are dominated by hashtags and expressions of solidarity. 

When the city of Paris faced tragedy twice in 2015, with attacks in November and January, users on Twitter came together to express support. During the attacks on the offices of Charlie Hebdo, #JeSuiCharlie was used in tweets around the world. After the shootings last month at the Bataclan theater, #PrayForParis and #PortOuverte were used.

#BlackLivesMatter, a unifying message for discussion of racial inequality, was tweeted 9 million times in 2015, according to Twitter. Advocates for countries opening their doors to refugees voiced their opinions using #RefugeesWelcome.

Support for the marriage equality decision was discussed using #LoveWins. After Ahmed Mohammed was detained at his Texas school when authorities thought his homemade clock was a bomb, #IStandWithAhmed took over Twitter within six hours.

In 2015, Caitlyn Jenner broke records with her entrance to Twitter, attaining one million followers in just four hours. Her first tweet was also one of Twitter's top retweets of 2015, with 259,705 shares.

The "Most Retweeted" list also included tweets from president Obama—using #LoveWins—King Salman of Saudi Arabia, and Kanye West. Leonard Nimoy's last tweet before his death received over 200,000 retweets, and just as many likes.

But by far, the list was dominated by members of One Direction. Each member of the group—including Zayn Malik, who left the band—had a tweet in the "Most Retweeted" category.

The number one most shared tweet came from the band's Harry Styles, writing simply, "All the love always. H."

Other top moments included the FIFA World Cup, worldwide elections, the Pluto fly by, and viral sensation "The Dress." The controversy over the blue and black or white and gold garment "caused heads to explode," as Twitter wrote. The topic garnered 4.4 million tweets in two days.

One Direction also came in number one for music trends of the year. Twitter noted the top ten trends in music, TV, tech, news, politics, sports pastimes, stars, and, of course, emojis.

The top emoji on twitter is the "tears of joy" expression, which was also crowned Oxford Dictionaries' Word of the Year last month.

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