What's in a number? Many governments, celebrities and corporates have changed the way we live by the magic of mere numbers in 2017 and here is how:
1. Twitter, our favourite social media platform that has relentlessly worked wonders in just 140-character tweets around the world since 2006, has taken a leap forward doubling the number to 280 in 2017.
2. Donald Trump, who took over as the 45th US President on Jan 20, 2017 remained dominant on Twitter throughout the year barring 17 days on top of conversation. He was tweeted about some 901.8 million times in 2017, nearly 10 times the number of mentions for his predecessor, Barack Obama, during his final year in office.
3. Hollywood fame and singer Katy Perry's account @katyperry on Twitter emerged as the biggest in size with 105.85 million followers. In comparison, former US President Barack Obama is still followed by 96.4 million people.
4. Football celebrity Christiano Ronaldo has topped the Facebook with the highest number of supporters at 122.61 million followed by singer Shakira with 104.14 million. Brand presence on social media is a serious business now.
5. Every year ends or begins with a horrifying terrorist strike somewhere in the world. But 2017 can go down in memory as the year when the number of Islamic State group fighters dwindled from 35,000 in Iraq and Syria controlling more than 17,000 square miles, roughly the size of Pennsylvania to 3,000 militants occupying less than 2,000 square miles, according to officials at the U.S. military, which has conducted 11,400 airstrikes since Jan. 1, 2017.
6. The crypto currency Bitcoin has shocked all forex experts and economists. From less than $1,000 in January 2017, the virtual currency went up to touch $18,000 at one point of time in December before settling at $14,500 at the year-end, skyrocketing in value by more than 1,300 percent.
7. Mavis Wanczyk who bought a lottery ticket in August 2017 from a convenience store in Chicopee, Massachusetts won $758 million, the largest grand prize won by a single lottery ticket in US history.
8. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos surpassed Microsoft founder Bill Gates as the world's richest man on the Forbes list with his net worth crossing $100 billion for the first time on November 24, 2017. Currently, Bezos' net worth is estimated at $99.6 billion.
9. Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) created world record launching 104 satellites in a single mission. Out of the total 104 satellites placed in orbit, 96 satellites belonged to the US.
10. The 'Fake News' controversy over Russia's efforts to influence the 2016 US Presidential election by fabricating posts on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube led to intense scrutiny of social-media companies in 2017. The numbers finally show that Russian posts had appeared in the news feeds of 126 million people, almost 12 times more than Facebook's first estimate of 10 million.
