2015 has been a very memorable year for Singapore, with
the events in the country over the past year resembling an
emotional roller-coaster ride.
The joy of celebrating this young nation’s 50th birthday
was tempered by the death of Singapore’s founding father, Lee Kuan
Yew, earlier this year. And, beyond that was the 2015 general
elections, which saw intense campaigning as well as a surprisingly
comprehensive victory for the ruling PAP party.
However, while these events, as expected, drew a lot of
chatter on Twitter, the most popular tweet of the year came from a
most unlikely source.
The most retweeted Tweet this year, coined the ‘Golden
Tweet,’ was a declaration of love by Twitter user @Fatynn, who
tweeted a series of photos of her hand-made gift to her boyfriend,
celebrating their special memories together.
This simple, yet heartfelt tweet was retweeted over 15,000
times, and viewed over one million times on Twitter.
Key moments in
Singapore
Twitter recently summed up the events in Singapore that
made a big splash in social media. Based on the times they saw a
spike in tweets, the company drew out the things that Singaporeans
and Singapore residents spoke about the most. These included:
Upon the death of Lee Kuan Yew, Twitter was flooded with
the hashtag #RememberingLKY, and received 1.2million tweets of
support for his family, people expressing their grief, as well as
tweets that celebrated the founding father's life and
achievements.
This was followed by the nation’s Golden Jubilee National
Day Parade on 9 August, when the hashtags #SG50 and #NDP2015
trended. The National Day Parade celebrations around the city-state
brought out the national spirit, resulting in over 230,000 tweets
and setting a new record for the most number of tweets for a
single-day event in Singapore.
The General Elections were held in September, and within
that one week of campaigning – the shortest campaign period in the
world – Singaporeans sent a total of 360,000 tweets sharing their
views on the various candidates and parties. The hashtag that
trended in that week was #GE2015.
In the later months of the year, the haze affected
Singapore and its neighbouring countries thanks to the annual
‘slash and burn’ exercises at plantations in Indonesia.
Singapore laboured for three months under a smoky haze
with around 250,000 Tweets that included everything from PSI levels
to humourous images of the slowly disappearing skyline. Most used
the hashtag #SGhaze.
Other events, like the Singapore Grand Prix, garnered
close to one million tweets over race week, while the 2015 Women’s
Tennis Association (WTA) finals saw over 460,000 tweets.