As Francis of Assissi once wisely said, ‘it is in giving that we receive’. A lovely, wholesome thought. As we’ve already mentioned earlier this month, social media users seem to prefer talking about gifts they’re excited to give as opposed to ones they receive. But with all the expectation surrounding Christmas gifting, does the excitement of receiving gifts match up to the excitement of giving them?
Ultimately, their overall success boils down to the reception they receive on The Big Day. In our previous blog post, we looked at some of last year’s most talked about presents on social in the build-up to Christmas Day. These were anything to do with Hygge, virtual reality, fitness tech, and gift subscriptions. But how did these gifts fare with their recipients, and which presents were most praised?
We examined the social conversation around these gifts from 25th December 2016 in the UK, narrowing this down to conversation specifically coming from recipients, or the reactions of recipients as recorded by others.
Gift subscriptions were universally well received, with 100% of the conversation being positive*. Magazine subscriptions were the most common ones mentioned, and particularly the New Yorker.
This was closely followed by virtual reality, of which 93.9% of the conversation was positive. Sony’s PS4 VR was mentioned the most, although Samsung Gear also featured within the conversation. Noticeably absent was the Oculus Rift headset, but with Google searches dropping by 368% since January 2016, this isn’t so surprising. In last year’s competition to be the best VR headset, it seems Sony won this fair and square.
93.3% of fitness tech mentions were positive, with Fitbit leading the conversation (62%). 100% of tweets were from women, and the top emojis used all reflected the positive responses of users: 🏃 (20%) and 😁 (10%).
In last place falls the gifting theme of Hygge, of which 82.1% of the conversation was positive. Hygge seemed to produce a love/hate effect, with users either relishing their Hygge-themed gifts, or being relieved they didn’t receive them at all…
Following in this vein, we’ve also found the most badly received Christmas present of 2016. With 97% of mentions either consisting of negative or sarcastic comments, we would suggest that a Lynx gift set seems to be the worst present you can possibly give to someone this year. Don’t say we didn’t warn you…
* Based only on either positive or negative tweets, and excluding neutral tweets/tweets not specifically relating to personal reactions and opinions
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