Rewind 2019: Before Covid, Indians were joyful about pets, food, humour on Twitter

Microblogging platform Twitter said on Tuesday a study commissioned by the platform shows Indians found joy in everyday conversations on topics linked to sports, celebrities, animals, family and food among others on the platform last year before the onslaught of the Covid 19 pandemic. Twitter India commissioned Quilt.AI to analyse conversations on the service. The team studied 850,000 tweets across 22 cities in India from September-November 2019, over a 100-day period.

As per the study, in 2019, themes such as animals, celebration, good deeds, celebrity content, family, food, humour, nostalgia, romance and sports drove 'joyful' conversations on Twitter.

Southern cities like Ernakulam, Hyderabad and Chennai led conversations across themes of sports, food, celebration, celebrity content, and humour. While Ludhiana topped the charts for conversations on romance, Raipur led conversations around animals. Bhubaneswar had the most conversations around family and doing good deeds, whereas Mumbai led conversations on nostalgia.


Manish Maheshwari, managing director, Twitter India said Twitter is a 'modern public square' where diverse voices discuss their views on topics that interest them.

"Last year, people were revelling in many joys of life. With conversation replay, we intend to throwback to those vibrant conversations, across varied themes of joy from diverse parts of India. Sharing these conversations is our way of giving Indians a moment of happiness and reminding them that little pleasures lead to joy.”

Martyn Uren, head of research - APAC and MENA, Twitter added: “Our research has found that Indians on Twitter love to talk about topics that bring them joy, and there is a diverse range of these topics that one can see emerging from different parts of the country, from food and family to celebration and celebrity content, and much more. With conversation replay, we hope to delight people with a throwback to the unique, happy, and joyful moments that they Tweeted about in 2019."

According to the study, Chennai led engagement around celebrity content followed by Visakhapatnam and Coimbatore. "The prominence of southern cities on the leaderboard is no surprise considering every year top Twitter conversations around entertainment emerge from this region," Twitter stated.

Users from Ernakulam engaged the most on sports conversations on Twitter as per the study followed by people from Bhubaneshwar and Chennai.