CeBIT draws to a close

The world's largest digital information technology and telecommunications trade fair is drawing to a close for the year.

Technology enthusiasts and industry observers will have to wait until 5 March next year to get another taste of the giant conglomeration of all things digital.

Having kicked off on Tuesday with the daily overriding topic “All Things Smart”, days two and three fell under the themes “Flying the Cloud” and “Connect your Lifestyle”, respectively.

Although the prime theme for 2012's CeBIT spectacular is “Managing Trust” - in light of prevalent global ICT security concerns - fair-goers and followers of CeBIT on social media platforms found a number of other trends that piqued their tech feelers.

Global communications consultancy firm Bite has tallied the daily top tweets, indicative of what the community found worthy of sharing from this year's CeBIT.

Wednesday's buzz words from keynotes revolved largely around the elusive and relatively new concept of cloud computing. Social media publicity on micro-blogging Web site Twitter revealed the following top five trends:

1. Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) was the most popular Twitter topic on Wednesday, with live action streamed on the IEM Web site. (@IntelIEM)
2. Wired Aperture's photo, featuring a pole-dancing robot, was the second most retweeted post. (@WiredUK)
3. Once again, mirroring Tuesday's third most popular tweet, Neelie Kroes, VP of the European Commission responsible for Europe's digital agenda, was widely retweeted with her “wise words”: “Better #privacy options are a competitive advantage. And we need to be aware that younger generation has a diff attitude to thers.” (sic) (@NeelieKroesEU)
4. Sticking to the cloud theme, Capgemini won the BITKOM Urban Solution award for its smart energy solution “Cloud Power”. (@capgemini)
5. The world's best gamer photos, once again from IEM, featured at number five on the list. These supplemented the organisation's live action that made waves online. (@IntelEM)

Content, mobility, entertainment, Web television, home entertainment, intelligent home networking, mobile TV, augmented reality and connected TV were the main topics under the spotlight yesterday, but the following top five trends were revealed on Twitter:

1. For the second day running, Intel Extreme Masters proved most popular in the twittersphere, with its world championship entering its final stages. (@intelEM)
2. Christian Heilman, Mozilla developer, posted an image after the German minister of economics was allegedly attacked in front of the Mozilla booth. The photograph shows the alleged attacker waiting for the police to arrive in one of the CeBIT halls: “The wirtschaftsminister attacker waiting for the police to arrive. #cebit http://pic.twitter.com/sfIkExoW.” (@codepo8)
3. International Women's Day was a popular trend on Twitter, as shown by the theme being echoed by tweets from across the show. Dell's social media manager for Germany Janine Wegner (@janineatdell) was responsible for much of the pertinent subject matter.
4. SAP's co-founder, Hasso Plattner's, discourse on the global software giant's 40^th anniversary, which it celebrates this year, made number four on the retweet list. (@SAPinfo)
5. CeBIT's Websiety livestream gave visuals of the fair direct from the Internet solutions exhibition area, proving one of the top five areas of interest. (@CeBIT)