New statistics from Twitter show that the Iranian election was the top trending topic in terms of news events on the microblogging site this year.
Twitter reveals that the terms #iranelection, Iran and Tehran also made it into the 21 most popular trending topics for 2009 overall.
Other news related issues that were regularly discussed by Twitter users this year included swine flu, Gaza, AIG and the flurry of heavy snow experienced in the UK in February.
The most popular people referenced on Twitter included Michael Jackson, Susan Boyle, Adam Lambert, Kobe Bryant and Chris Brown, while Harry Potter, New Moon and District 9 dominated when it came to films.
In terms of TV shows, American Idol, Glee and the Teen Choice Awards came out on top, as did the Super Bowl, the Lakers and Wimbledon in the sports category and Google Wave, Snow Leopard and Tweetdeck in technology.
The top hashtag term was #musicmonday, which sees users tweet about what they are listening to and their favourite songs and artists.
Abdur Chowdhury, chief scientist for Twitter, says these trending topics represent "an interesting time capsule of what was happening as this decade came to a close".
The website recently announced that it is testing a feature called Contributors that allows businesses to manage multiple users across their Twitter accounts, appending the contributor's username to the tweet byline in the process.
