Harry Styles (l) and his One Direction bandmates, from left Louis Tomlinson, Liam Payne, Zayn Malik and Niall Horan. Photo / AP
Harry Styles (l) and his One Direction bandmates, from left Louis Tomlinson, Liam Payne, Zayn Malik and Niall Horan. Photo / AP
One Direction and the World Cup dominated Twitter in the UK in what was overall "the year of the selfie".
Tweeters' love of camera phone self-portraits showed no sign of abating, with the term "selfie" mentioned 92 million times by the social network's 284 million active global users, an increaseof 500 per cent on 2013, Twitter said.
A seemingly innocuous celebration of 1D's four years together by singer Harry Styles was the most retweeted tweet by a UK account in 2014, while the band between them have five of the most followed British accounts.
And despite England's dismal performances and early flight home, the Brazil World Cup broke records to become the most tweeted about subject globally, and its matches were six of the top 10 most mentioned events in the UK.
Germany's 7-1 demolition of Brazil in the World Cup semi-final on July 8 was the single most tweeted about event by UK users.
One Direction dominate the list of the UK's most followed accounts, with Styles's @Harry-Styles account top with 22.8 million followers.
But he's not even close to the global top 10 most-followed accounts, led by pop star Katy Perry (61 million), Justin Bieber (57 million), Barack Obama (51 million) and Taylor Swift (48 million).
