Happy New Year to all.

Sending Christmas SMS messages has been a big tradition in many European and Asian countries since late 1990s. Over the past two years, SMS volume has started showing sharp declines in several European markets. In this blog, we look at how Londoners have used Twitter on New Year Eve.

Just under 400,000 tweets containing New Year were posted within a 20 miles radius from central London from the 31st of December to the first of January. With 114,000, or 29% of tweets, from 11PM to 1PM.

Tweets by Hour

If we look close to the time around midnight (i.e. by minute), we can see that most tweets were within minutes of 12.

Tweets by Minute

From a geographical perspective, the tweets are most dense in and around central London and the river where most festivities have taken place.

New year Tweets in Central London

The following table lists the most retweeted messages. Surprisingly very few replies to the lone tweeters out there considering that 400,000 messages were tweeted! Maybe other means of communication are more effective!