How Ramadan was celebrated around the world on Twitter

Friday, 8 July 2016

#EidMubarak to everyone celebrating around the world. May you have a blessed celebration with family, friends, and loved ones.

Twitter has always been the platform for live conversations, live connections, and live commentary. And throughout the month of #Ramadan, it has been a significant platform for many around the world to share their spiritual journey every day. In fact, Tweets related to #Ramadan were viewed over 10.7 billion times on Twitter during the Holy Month. Click on the heat map below to see how people shared their #Ramadan conversations on Twitter during #Eid.

How Ramadan was celebrated around the world on Twitter

We also released a special emoji to make Twitter more fun for Muslims around the world as they celebrated #Eid. Just use any of the hashtags below to see a mosque appear next to these terms.

In the Middle East, users flocked to Twitter to have real-time updates on #Ramadan activities and find useful information/content, to connect with other people who share the Islamic faith, to share their well-wishes and special moments during the blessed month and join the conversation around their favorite TV shows.

Twitter and TV have always had a special relationship in the Middle East and this relationship was clear during #Ramadan. In the Middle East, there were over 7.1 million Tweets about #Ramadan television shows and series, with سيلفي ٢ taking the lion share with more than 2.5 million Tweets sent during the month. The top talked-about shows on Twitter were: نص يوم, الشريان, ياهلا رمضان, يونس, رامز بيلعب بالنار, القيصر and سمرقند. Regional broadcasters like @MBC1, @DubaiTV and @CBCEGypt, used Twitter video to share previews, sneak peeks and recaps.

Twitter also partnered with broadcaster @MBC1 to provide users with a subscription service that sends a Tweet reminder when their favorite #Ramadan show was about to start.

Celebrities across the region used the Holy Month as an opportunity to connect with fans directly on Twitter. There were over 20 celebrity Twitter Q&As in the Middle East during the month of #Ramadan including from @Youssra, @GhadaAbdelRazek and @MayssaMaghrebi.



This year, more than ever people were able to connect live with each other thanks to Periscope. People in the Middle East used Periscope to connect and share relevant and useful information including cooking shows from @CBCsofra, religious wisdom from @Amr Khaled, @Salman_Alodah and @abuabdelelah, or announcing daily winners for #Ramadan riddles @BothinaKamel1 and a health show from @Akhbarak.


We also saw major regional celebrities join Twitter for the first time during #Ramadan to connect with their most loyal fans and share updates about their shows including @Mahmoud, @Youssra, @mohammed_Abdu.



Indonesia, the largest Muslim-populated country, celebrated the Holy Month by sharing the local experience with Twitter’s photo and video features. Twitter became the chosen platform for Indonesians to share information about the best places to enjoy #iftar dinner, photos of their #suhoor meal, to videos of their #pulkam or homecoming journey.



For the first time, a new @ramadhan account was launched with eight different partners as, a one-stop account to follow for high quality content around #Ramadan in Indonesia. Indonesians followed and Tweeted to the new account using a series of hashtags to receive daily curated content around food, wisdom and prayer reminder. The @ramadhan Tweets were viewed over 1.7 million times on Twitter in the past month.



In addition, Indonesians also shared their hometown’s unique Ramadan and #Lebaran tradition through #KisahPulkam competition. This competition is a collaboration with @pulkam, a community of passionate Indonesians who have been using the platform since 2009 to share stories during the homecoming season and #Lebaran celebrations through photos, videos, Periscopes, and Vines.



The @pulkam community also organized a Periscope drone activation which showed the different scenery of the capital city Jakarta - which is usually full of traffic jams - to give a bird’s eye view of the clear streets on the second day of #Lebaran.

Finally, check out this collection of Tweets to see how people from all across the world celebrated #Eid on Twitter.