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Chris Allison is a social media strategist at NeboWeb, where he helps clients make the most of the social web. You can follow him on Twitter as the voice behind @Neboweb.

You may have seen Twitter’s recently announced most discussed topics of ‘09. The list really highlights the gravity of this important year: A new US President was sworn into office, celebrities died and celebrities were born, there were revolutions, there were pandemics, and technology continued its rapid advance.

2009 has also been a huge year for Twitter itself, as the network has rapidly become the sieve through which all real-time news and culture flows. Here, we break down the most influential topics that passed through Twitter this year, and discuss what they mean for users and the service itself.

On January 16th, Micah Baldwin of Lijit Networks started Follow Fridays. It wasn’t a marketing test or viral experiment — it was just Micah being Micah. By the end of that Friday the hashtag #followfriday had been created (it wasn’t in the original tweet) and used by so many people that most of them didn’t even know who started it anymore — it was just one of those Twitter things.

The most remarkable fact about Follow Friday is that it spread naturally without plan, hypothesis, or agenda. The way Micah’s ...