From Love/Hate to Brian O'Driscoll, we showed this year that we're big fans of having a chat on social media. 

The Irish have always been a social people, and when we want to have a chinwag these days, it looks like we turn to Twitter to talk about something that has gotten our attention. This year, we were doing plenty of hashtagging, tweeting and sharing as we discussed the biggest events that took place throughout the year. 

Twitter has declared 2014 the year of the selfie, and no selfie was bigger than Ellen DeGeneres' celeb-packed Oscar tweet, that got well over 3 million retweets. it inspired photoshops, parodies and tributes, all of which didn't get old in the slightest after ten minutes, we swear... Anyway, selfie was mentioned 92 million times on Twitter since January, a 500% hike on 2013.

When it came to TV, the Irish were mad for the tweeting, and as it turns out we were big fans of Love/Hate. We'd never have guessed... The biggest spike in Twitterland happened after the episode this October when Pauley met his end after being pushed off a roof by Siobhan and Patrick slitting a hitman's throat. We were very shaken up with the gruesomeness of it altogether, but it turns out we were watching a lot of Vincent Brown, RTE's Prime Time and the Late Late too, as they topped the charts with the most amount of chatter on the related hashtags. 

Sports were another big part of our year, with plenty of us tweeting and talking about the All-Ireland semi-final between Mayo and Kerry in August, while there was also a big spike in traffic after Ireland beat France to claim Six Nations glory. That was also the last tournament for Brian O'Driscoll, and his tweet on the day he hung up his boots probably had a few of us wiping tears from our eyes. 

Rory McIlroy also had a few major moments (get it?), and the World Cup was high up on our agenda too, even though we weren't even a the competition. Maybe next time... Overall, the World Cup generated a record 672 million tweets, with Brazil's 7-1 thrashing at the hands of Germany being the most talked about moment. Of course, the tournament wasn't safe from the scourge of the selfie.

When it comes to who we were talking about, there was one man in a stetson hat that had us all hashtagging like mad, the one and only Garth Brooks. His Croke Park concert saga not only seemed to be interminable, but it also got us tweeting as the whole story was also the most talked about Irish news event of the year. We also talked about Irish Water, the Budget and the floods in Cork, but Garth was the main man in 2014. 

As for Irish people, Brian O'Driscoll was the most talked about person, while Graham Norton wasn't far behind. Conor McGregor's big year didn't go unnoticed either (nor did #UFCDublin) while Donal Walsh's story touched millions of lives, which was reflected on Twitter too. 

If you want to explore everything that the world was talking about, from sports to news to entertainment, as well as seeing it from the perspectives of some of Twitter's biggest movers and shakers (including Lady Gaga, Aaron Paul and Neymar), then head over to Twitter's dedicated site for the year in review 2014.twitter.com. 

As for us, we're off to plan a way to break Twitter in Ireland in 2015 which will include Garth Brooks getting his hands on the world cup, BOD challenging to fight him for it in the Octagon in Croker, before the whole thing gets cancelled and we show and they appear in an episode of Love/Hate instead.