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Nick Jonas fans hijack Twitter trending topics with Jick Nonas
May 17, 2010 by Beatweek
Another day, another fanbase using deception to defeat Twitter’s new trending topic algorithm in order to get their favorite artist’s name to trend by tricking the algorithm into thinking the artist a newly hot topic by inverting the initial letters, changing up the spelling, or adding a word. Last time it was “Bieber Trend” on the part of the Justin Bieber fanbase, and now it’s “Jick Nonas” being fanjacked into the trending topics list by fans of Nick Jonas and/or The Jonas Brothers. The gamesmanship, which initially felt clever but has now taken on a decidedly “been there, done that” feel in record time, will likely have to resolved by tweaks to the trending formula, which may be a challenge for the company’s coders as the cat-and-mouse possibilities of misspellings and alterations are seemingly limitless.
The theory goes that the algorithm ignores mentions of known quantities such as “Justin Bieber” or “Nick Jonas” no matter how often they’re being mentioned, unless there’s actual news attached to it, for instance “Justin Bieber on American Idol” – but the use of inverted names like “Bustin Jieber” and now “Jick Nonas” trick Twitter’s algorithm into thinking that these names are brand new topics of discussion. Bustin Jieber hasn’t appeared in the trending topics for some time now, likely because the algorithm has already discarded it as a known quantity, and the same will presumably happen to Jick Nonas eventually as well. But if fans decide to keep fighting they can simply switch over to trying to get “Jick Jonas” or whatever variation comes next onto the trending list instead.
The whole situation has likely led many Twitter users to question why it’s so important to some users that they be able to fanjack the trending topics with the name of their favorite artist at will, when the trending list was clearly always intended to highlight breaking news or emerging topics rather than simply whatever words are being mentioned the most often in conversation; otherwise words like “the” and “and” would invariably top the list. Nonetheless, such attempts at logic haven’t stopped enthusiastic fans from doing their thing; perhaps another revision of the trending topics algorithm will finally put an end to it.
[...] Justin Bieber and Nick Jonas fans sparred on Twitter, subverting Twitter’s trending topic algorithm by an elite force “fanjacking” (an AMAZING portmanteau!) campaign. Then, Justin Bieber PRACTICALLY BROKE THE INNERNETZ when photos [...]