Twitter’s trending topics officially turn into a waste

April 25, 2010 by Bill Palmer

Trending topics have traditionally been to Twitter what the “lead story” is to the nightly news or the “front page” is to the local newspaper. When logging onto the microblogging service, the list of top ten trending topics not only allows Twitter users to immediately garner at a glance not only what the most popular topics of discussion are on the service at the moment, but also often offers a glimpse into what’s happening in the world at large. Breaking news stories such as the earthquake in Chile or the political dissent in Iraq can alert users to real world news as it’s breaking, even at a time of day when the general public isn’t typically tuned into traditional news outlets. But as with any naturally occurring phenomenon, someone is going to figure out how to game the system eventually – and that’s why as of today, Twitter’s trending topics are nothing more than a useless wasteland.

It’s not the end of the world that the names of certain pop culture individuals (most frequently Justin Bieber of late) have seen their name frequently appear in the top ten list. If the individual is just that popular, and the fandom is discussing the individual just that much, then so be it; that’s the way the system is supposed to work. In fact, when the name of an elderly famous individual appears in the trending topics, it’s often an indicator that the person has passed away (although this occasionally leads to a few false alarms). But at this moment, here’s what Twitter’s “trending topics” list looks like:

I♥JonasBrothers
#sometimesitsbetter
#nowplaying
I♥JustiniBieber
I♥MileyCyrus
I♥ChrisBrown
I♥NickiMinaj
#wedontbelieveyou
Justin Bieber
#Pleasetellmewhy

It’s unlikely that any Twitter user, even one who is a fan of all of the artists listed above, would be able to find any use in the above list of trending topics – suggesting that it may be time for the service to intervene and either preemptively block certain types of fluff-based topics from trending in the first place or put someone in charge of monitoring the topic and selectively removing the ones that don’t belong. Such a move could be considered censorship and is always a slippery slope not to be taken lightly. Then again, we’ve seen documented evidence that Twitter does censor trending topics for profanity, as during the infamous case of an accidental use of a disallowed profanity on Saturday Night Live last year, trending topics in that moment included every euphemism for the actual swear word – but not the word itself – despite the fact that a Twitter search revealed that the word was in fact being used more frequently in Twitter in that moment than any of its euphemisms. This leads to the question of why Twitter feels justified in keeping the F-word out of the trending topics (an understandable precaution) but not something as nonsensical as I♥[insert name of artist here], particularly when the latter represents a clear attempt to game the system on the part of fans, whereas the former represented a spontaneous outbreak of legitimate discourse over a surprising event that had just taken place on national television.

Again, such censorship is a slippery slope. But at this point trending topics are of no use to serious Twitter users or even most casual Twitter users anyway, and instead more closely resemble something a user might expect to find on the decaying and increasingly abandoned MySpace than on the still-thriving Twitter.

How long before Twitter does something about it? Your thoughts?

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Filed Under: iPod, iPhone, iPad, and iTunes
Tagged: list, trending topics, tweets, Twitter

About Bill Palmer

Bill Palmer is Editor in Chief of Beatweek Magazine. His editorial contributions include interviews with musicians and iPhone industry coverage.

Comments

http://www.adrianmcmillan.com WeaponII

They never will, so long as it's raking users and bringing them money. I hope they eliminate trending topics completely.
http://www.adrianmcmillan.com WeaponII

They never will, so long as it's raking users and bringing them money. I hope they eliminate trending topics completely.
http://www.adrianmcmillan.com WeaponII

They never will, so long as it's raking users and bringing them money. I hope they eliminate trending topics completely.
http://www.adrianmcmillan.com WeaponII

They never will, so long as it's raking users and bringing them money. I hope they eliminate trending topics completely.
http://www.adrianmcmillan.com WeaponII

They never will, so long as it's raking users and bringing them money. I hope they eliminate trending topics completely.
http://www.adrianmcmillan.com WeaponII

They never will, so long as it's raking users and bringing them money. I hope they eliminate trending topics completely.
http://www.adrianmcmillan.com WeaponII

They never will, so long as it's raking users and bringing them money. I hope they eliminate trending topics completely.
http://www.adrianmcmillan.com WeaponII

They never will, so long as it's raking users and bringing them money. I hope they eliminate trending topics completely.
http://www.adrianmcmillan.com WeaponII

They never will, so long as it's raking users and bringing them money. I hope they eliminate trending topics completely.
iggyp

Everything is super cool until everyone else finds out about it.

I really loved twitter when I found it two years ago and in recent months, it has been sucking.

Everyone posts links instead of a status update and people don't embrace #tags anymore. Entities (businesses, websites, people, organizations) link their RSS feeds into it and feed us the same thing I am getting from my Google reader.

The other reason I used to really dig twitter is because there used to be a human being behind entity accounts, but now, it seems to be mostly run by robots.
maxwellvintage

As long as it is a healthy mix of fluff and other topics. If I want to get depressed, all I have to do is watch the news. so I welcome the playfullness and the fluff. I am against twitter intervening and would say loosen up some, take yourself and others less serious at times and just enjoy. :0)
maxwellvintage

As long as it is a healthy mix of fluff and other topics. If I want to get depressed, all I have to do is watch the news. so I welcome the playfullness and the fluff. I am against twitter intervening and would say loosen up some, take yourself and others less serious at times and just enjoy. :0)
maxwellvintage

As long as it is a healthy mix of fluff and other topics. If I want to get depressed, all I have to do is watch the news. so I welcome the playfullness and the fluff. I am against twitter intervening and would say loosen up some, take yourself and others less serious at times and just enjoy. :0)
maxwellvintage

As long as it is a healthy mix of fluff and other topics. If I want to get depressed, all I have to do is watch the news. so I welcome the playfullness and the fluff. I am against twitter intervening and would say loosen up some, take yourself and others less serious at times and just enjoy. :0)
maxwellvintage

As long as it is a healthy mix of fluff and other topics. If I want to get depressed, all I have to do is watch the news. so I welcome the playfullness and the fluff. I am against twitter intervening and would say loosen up some, take yourself and others less serious at times and just enjoy. :0)
maxwellvintage

As long as it is a healthy mix of fluff and other topics. If I want to get depressed, all I have to do is watch the news. so I welcome the playfullness and the fluff. I am against twitter intervening and would say loosen up some, take yourself and others less serious at times and just enjoy. :0)
maxwellvintage

As long as it is a healthy mix of fluff and other topics. If I want to get depressed, all I have to do is watch the news. so I welcome the playfullness and the fluff. I am against twitter intervening and would say loosen up some, take yourself and others less serious at times and just enjoy. :0)
maxwellvintage

As long as it is a healthy mix of fluff and other topics. If I want to get depressed, all I have to do is watch the news. so I welcome the playfullness and the fluff. I am against twitter intervening and would say loosen up some, take yourself and others less serious at times and just enjoy. :0)
maxwellvintage

As long as it is a healthy mix of fluff and other topics. If I want to get depressed, all I have to do is watch the news. so I welcome the playfullness and the fluff. I am against twitter intervening and would say loosen up some, take yourself and others less serious at times and just enjoy. :0)
maxwellvintage

As long as it is a healthy mix of fluff and other topics. If I want to get depressed, all I have to do is watch the news. so I welcome the playfullness and the fluff. I am against twitter intervening and would say loosen up some, take yourself and others less serious at times and just enjoy. :0)
maxwellvintage

As long as it is a healthy mix of fluff and other topics. If I want to get depressed, all I have to do is watch the news. so I welcome the playfullness and the fluff. I am against twitter intervening and would say loosen up some, take yourself and others less serious at times and just enjoy. :0)
maxwellvintage

As long as it is a healthy mix of fluff and other topics. If I want to get depressed, all I have to do is watch the news. so I welcome the playfullness and the fluff. I am against twitter intervening and would say loosen up some, take yourself and others less serious at times and just enjoy. :0)
maxwellvintage

As long as it is a healthy mix of fluff and other topics. If I want to get depressed, all I have to do is watch the news. so I welcome the playfullness and the fluff. I am against twitter intervening and would say loosen up some, take yourself and others less serious at times and just enjoy. :0)
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