The Week That Was: Best of All

It's mid-December, which must means it's... end-of-the-year, round-up time! This week you couldn't turn a page or click a link without stumbling upon best of' lists, reader votes and the like, and I'm afraid at HuffPost we couldn't resist joining in. Rather than select our own favourites, however, we teamed up with Ogilvy PR to crowd-source hundreds of recommendations for the accolade of, and then asked a panel of experts to judge the final lists.

It's mid-December, which must means it's... end-of-the-year, round-up time!

This week you couldn't turn a page or click a link without stumbling upon best of' lists, reader votes and the like, and I'm afraid at HuffPost we couldn't resist joining in. Rather than select our own favourites, however, we teamed up with Ogilvy PR to crowd-source hundreds of recommendations for the accolade of best content of the year, and then asked a panel of experts to judge the final lists.

You can read for yourself here what came out on top, but don't be at all surprised by the ubiquitous Miley Cyrus mentions.

The world's most famous twerker also featured this week in YouTube's top trending videos of the year, although not perhaps as highly as you might expect.

In fact, it was the frankly hilarious How Animals Eat Their Food (which also appeared high up in HuffPost's best content of the year poll) that was named YouTube's most watched clip of 2013, amassing 89million views at its last count and topping a list that also included Tom Daley, Peppa Pig and two Britain's Got Talent appearances.

Twitter got in on the act too, unveiling its top trending topics of 2013 on Thursday. The most surprising aspect of their countdown was perhaps how traditional it appeared, with baby Prince George (or #RoyalBaby as he was known at the time), the weather and the footie among the most popular topics.

If traditional is what you're after, Time magazine's Person of the Year certainly fits the bill. Pope Francis takes pride of place on the cover of the US publication this week having "placed himself at the very centre of the central conversations of our time, about wealth and poverty, fairness and justice, transparency, modernity, globalisation, the role of women, the nature of marriage, the temptations of power," according to the magazine's managing editor, Nancy Gibbs.

Pope Francis might be representing a brand as old as it comes, but he's not afraid of embracing new mediums, as the so-called first Papal selfie, taken back in the summer and showing Pope Francis with a group of Italian teenagers, proves.

That snap is already registering as one of the most shared pictures of the year, proof if it were needed that professional photos aren't the only way of marking a moment (see also: grandad Middleton's photos of baby George).

For those feeling that's quite a lot of nonsense for one year, this heart-warming article from Think Progress will make your Christmas. The world might not be a perfect place, far from it, but it's getting much, much better.

And on the days it isn't, at least there are plenty of funny YouTube videos to bring a smile to our faces.

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