Social media round-up

Take a step back from the festive frenzy, grab a glass of mulled wine and a mince pie and enjoy the latest social media news hitting the headlines this week…

The Twitter vs Facebook battle for social media dominance continues. Twitter has introduced Instagram-style filters including 'vintage' and 'cinematic' just one week after it disabled a feature that improved the quality of Instagram images uploaded to Twitter. As the giants battle it out, the power of images in shaping the future of destination marketing across the travel industry is further ingrained.

This week The Telegraph revealed that 20.2% of all discussions relating to the weather on social media originate in Old Blighty and are more likely to be negative compared to any other nationality surveyed. It seems that our traditional obsession with the weather has gone viral… but seriously #itsreallycold.

Just a couple of weeks ago we announced that the Pope had joined Twitter. This week @Pontifex tweeted for the first time, resulting in over 30,000 re-tweets. Despite being given a little help on the iPad it seems the 85 year-old has got the hang of things, so far tweeting seven times. With over 1 million followers the Pope is proving to be a big hit in the world of social media, although he still has a long way to go to match the likes of Barack Obama or Lady Gaga's 32 million followers.

And finally… it would be fair to presume that Usain Bolt's 100m final, Mo Farah's double Olympic gold medal win or perhaps James Bond's Skyfall would top the UK 'Twitter Trends' for 2012. Indeed, these were all in the running but storming ahead in the 2012 charts was none other than London Mayor Boris Johnson. Caught on camera bopping along enthusiastically to the Spice Girls at the Olympic closing ceremony, Boris managed to rack up over 116,000 tweets a minute… go on embrace that guilty pleasure!