A plea for chicken nuggets has topped the list of most retweeted messages of 2017 on the social network Twitter.

The famous fast food chain Wendy's promised one of its customers free chicken nuggets for a year if he managed to get his request retweeted more than 18 million times.

In the end, Carter Wilkerson's plea -- "Help Me Please! A man needs his nuggs" -- was retweeted more than 3.6 million times, enough to secure the tweeter his annual supply of fried chicken.

In next place comes a tweet from former US President Barack Obama, written following racial tensions in Charlottesville and retweeted 1.7 million times: "No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion..." This is also the most liked tweet of all time, with 4.5 million "likes."

Other high-ranking tweets of the year include a message from Ariana Grande just after the terror attack outside her Manchester concert, and a photo of Chester Bennington posted by the band Linkin Park just after his death.

Note that the most talked about TV events of 2017 on Twitter worldwide were the Miss Universe contest, won this year by France's Iris Mittenaere, the Billboard Music Awards and the Super Bowl.

As for individuals, Donald Trump (politics) and Cristiano Ronaldo (sport) were the subject of much discussion on the social network.

Top 5 politicians with most Twitter mentions worldwide in 2017:

1. @RealDonaldTrump

2. @narendramodi

3. @NicolasMaduro

4. @RT_Erdogan

5. @EmmanuelMacron

Top 5 athletes:

1. @Cristiano

2. @KingJames

3. @Neymarjr

4. @Kaepernick7

5. @TheNotoriousMMA