In honor of Twitter’s IPO, The Atlantic pulled together a list of the most re-tweeted tweets of all time, according to FavStar. The results were … well, a little boring. A Dropbox guide to getting more free space made it to number nine, and banal tweets from teen sensations like One Direction, Justin Bieber, and Ariana Grande sat atop the list.
Twitter is better than that, so I hopped back onto FavStar to see if the most faved tweets brought us more encouraging results.
Some of the tweets don’t appear to exist on Twitter anymore, so I’ve omitted them. It should be noted that FavStar has a questionable measuring service – it somehow missed Barack Obama’s re-election tweet, which should’ve pulled in at number one with over 789,000 re-tweets. And a lot of the tweets listed as most-faved seem to have far fewer faves when you pull them up on Twitter than they do on FavStar. Mysterious.
The first tweet listed as being favorited over 27,000 times on FavStar only shows 446 faves currently, so either most people unfaved it, or FavStar is full of lies. Anyways, here it is:
This is not #TheGreatestTweetInTheWorld It is just a Tribute.
— James Vallance (@JamesCoolie) April 30, 2013
Not brilliant, but a pretty good Tenacious D/Twitter joke, and a lot better than the dull stuff that the most re-tweets pulls up.
The second most-faved tweet also made the most re-tweeted list: Ben Savage’s announcement that the Boy Meets World sequel Girl Meets World was a go:
I’m going to be a father! Well, on TV at least. The “Boy Meets World” sequel is officially happening!
— Ben Savage (@BenSavage) November 26, 2012
Some of the next tweets don’t appear on Twitter anymore, or they’re really boring — there are some desperate plugs for attention that somehow garnered a disproportionate amount of it, like this random plug:
Analyze the Narcissist in your life “Killer Handwriting” NEW on Amazon http://t.co/wJV7Q3LUbV Prime eligible #Kindle $4.99
— Deborah Dolen (@DeborahDolen) May 26, 2013
But some of the top most faved tweets are legitimately funny and great:
I love gay people. Or as I sometimes call them, “people.”
— rob delaney (@robdelaney) February 23, 2012
Please retweet this to spread awareness for retweets.
— Eli Langer (@EliLanger) March 17, 2013
Of course, some are awful:
MY BROTHER GOT DRUNK, AND HIS ROOMMATE SPENT 3 HOURS COLORING HIM WITH SHARPIE pic.twitter.com/wAXGo5j7JR
— FOLLOW @uitraball (@ghostive) July 4, 2013
Banality, distilled in Twitter form:
Reinvent yourself. Create your life the way you want it! Don’t settle for mediocrity:-) http://t.co/I8Mk3QY88B pic.twitter.com/A6jT9aZ6RC
— Gina Von Lach (@ginavonlach) May 2, 2013
Despite any issues on Favstar’s side, one thing is certain: Being the most-faved doesn’t necessarily make your tweet the best. And yes, these all came from a platform that started its public trading at $31.3 billion dollars. Soak in the genius, everyone.
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