Baahubali 2 and Mersal
Baahubali 2 vs Mersal.PR Handout

In what could be considered as a proud moment for the South Indian film industries, two movies created a huge buzz on Twitter this year. Yes, SS Rajamouli's Baahubali 2 and Vijay's Mersal are two Indian movies which were highly-debated topics on Twitter. In fact, they were more talked-about subjects than the films of Bollywood biggies. 

Twitter India has released the data that shows that Baahubali 2 and Mersal topics in the entertainment category were widely debated on the social media site by people using hashtags #Baahubali2 and #Mersal.

Baahubali 2 was a multilingual movie simultaneously released in Telugu, Tamil, Hindi and Malayalam. As a result, the topic got good engagement from people across the nation without any language barrier. 

Whereas Mersal, which is credited as the first-ever Tamil film to get a custom Twitter emoji, was released only in Tamil. Yet Vijay's film managed to trend on Twitter with over 1.7 million tweets in three days alone on the topic.

Salman Khan's Bigg Boss 11 is in the third place among the Top Hashtag Trend of the Year on Twitter in the entertainment category.

Another notable achievement from South films is the hashtag - #TSK – from Suriya's Thaana Serndha Kootam, which has become the golden tweet or most retweeted post in 2017 in India. It became the most trended hashtag following the second look release of the Tamil flick.

People use Twitter to express their views about current trends. Issues such as GST implementation, Jallikattu movement, first-anniversary of demonetisation, Indian Presidential elections and ban on triple talaq, among others, generated colossal engagement from people across the nation.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi tops the list of most followed Indian Twitter accounts followed by Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan. No South Indian actor features on the list.