I have previously mentioned twitter trending topics, but I feel that this feature of twitter is so powerful that I should make a full fledged blog post on it.
What is it?
As everyone on twitter tweets, about work, daily events, life, news etc.. on the right hand sidebar of the twitter web console, the 12 keywords which are being tweeted the most are displayed for everyone to see.
As the 10 most popular keywords keep changing so do the twitter trending topics.
So what?
Well to think that I know what globally twitter people find most important, gives me a lot of idea about what really gets people talking. What are people into!
Moreover if some really big event happens like - the Iran elections (and the ensuing riots) then how would I know abt it??
Newspapers have a global page which I never really read! It is the 10th or 11th page! So I had no clue abt the Iran election disaster until I kept noticing #iranelections trending on twitter.
My first thought was that Iranians must be celebrating or something, but after the topic was on no.1 position for more than 1 day I got curious and searched to see what exactly are people tweeting with regards to #iranelections?
This is when I found out about the Iran situation, which by the way they are still facing, and the topic is still trending.
After that Michael Jackson died and MJ, Michael Jackson etc was trending on twitter.
Today the rain situation in Mumbai became really bad and many Mumbai twitter people are tweeting the current situation wherever they are. So reports of flooding here, this road is clear, here a tree fell etc etc... is pouring in.
There were also funny tweets like it is waterblogging on twitter :D (@manuscrypts)
So #mumbairains is now trending on twitter (BTW I started that hashtag :) ). So now the people in Mumbai can have an up to date idea about what is happening, moreover they can send tweets out to find someone who is stranded in the same area as they are, or figure out safe roads to take while traveling etc..
Also globally just a few twitterers in Mumbai, told the 20 million people and more that it is a raining emergency in Mumbai!
Spam
Of course lot of spammers got all excited and started spamming the #mumbairains... this needs to be looked into by twitter admin, but despite that the feature is still very powerful.
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