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Twitter Trending Topics: Are They Useful?
In: web2.0
5 Aug 2009
The usefulness of Twitter trending topics has declined for me personally. All too often, I see people trying to “game” or “manipulate” the system to gain popularity. To me, the whole thing is null and void if it is contrived. Now that Twitter has brought these terms to the forefront, it seems the quest to make “the list” has a renewed purpose. I asked my Twitter followers if they utilized Twitter trends and here’s what they said:
http://twitter.com/shardayyy/status/3129450085
This begs the question: “How can we easily get value out of Twitter’s data?” It’s hard to say now that Twitter has officially become a spam platform. I’m looking for new and innovative ways to quickly find nuggets of info from Twitter. Each time, I’m led back to FriendFeed.
Yes, you knew it was coming.
It’s no secret that tweets supply a great deal of FriendFeed’s potent database. I’ve found that FriendFeed’s real-time search, plus the community, provide a great way to quickly get value out of Twitter’s data:
The above search considers all tweets in FriendFeed and only shows those which have the word “disagree” in the comments. It’s a juicy search I set the like and comment thresholds to 2, but that’s easily adjustable.
Now, you might be thinking “You have to be on FriendFeed in order for your tweets to be considered“. This is true, but I’d rather have a subset of Twitter’s database on FriendFeed, than Twitter’s full database with a lackluster search and spammy trending terms. The data is richer.
The downside of this? There is no date or language filtering. In some cases, you have to wade through languages you don’t know and sometimes older posts which you’ve already read. As you can see from the results, some of the results are older than desired. The point of Twitter trends (at least to me) is to get a snapshot of what’s happening now. So while I have a make-shift solution to get the valuable data from Twitter, it’s not a replacement for an effective trends search.
So what do you use? How do you get value out of Twitter’s data? Let me know. You can find me on Twitter as @Bwana.
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View Comments to Twitter Trending Topics: Are They Useful?
Dano
August 7th, 2009 at 7:02 pm
I like looking at trending topics for whats “currently” going on. However, since there are so many people that game the system and just add all trending topics to one tweet, or people saying “Why is (insert trending topic here) a trending topic?” I find myself scrolling down rather far to find what really is going on.
william
August 11th, 2009 at 9:28 am
Hiya, I follow you on twitter already and love your fab vidz on youtube. Was wondering what video screen recording software you use to get those lovely magnifications (such as in a circular shape)?
my twitter handle: @williamdoust
would appreciate your help – if not Open Source, do you know an alternative? – I currently use OS Screen Cam with no magnification ;-(
thanks
Rahul Aggarwal
August 16th, 2009 at 6:36 pm
Doing more with Twitter data, categorizing and filtering tweets better could add so much value to the Twitter experience. There is a new service that allows you to track the topics that you are tweeting about: mytweetopics.com. Currently it does so based only on #tags of the tweets – which is limiting. However its value comes from the fact that it segregates a users’ tweets by topics. It adds value on top of Twitter data in a novel manner. Would like to see if you think such an approach has potential?
[Disclaimer - I contributed to the service]
About The Twitter Campaign | Alexz Johnson Island
August 24th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
[...] not everyone even looks at the Trending Topics. I typically use TwitterFox myself when I tweet, so I rarely see the actual site itself. With [...]
Natalie Michelson
September 2nd, 2009 at 1:18 pm
I think the trending topics can be interesting but I don’t spend a whole lot of time reading through them. I mostly just do a quick glance every once in a while and if there is something particularly interesting (like #robotpickuplines) I’ll check it out.
Tropiclean Dog Shampoo
May 25th, 2010 at 10:48 am
Great. it must helpful for users.
Tropiclean Dog Shampoo
May 25th, 2010 at 5:48 am
Great. it must helpful for users.
johnny
August 5th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
No
This comment was originally posted on FriendFeed
sjmr
August 5th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Twitter Trending Topics: Are They Useful? | Bwana.org: It’s no secret that tweets supply a great deal of FriendF.. http://tr.im/vDbd
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
metalerik
August 7th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
don’t use twitter trending topics anymore. Also, I like the point you made about language and date filters. I use Micah’s translation script so I can read most of the posts regardless of original language. Being able to set time parameters and maybe even location ones would be so great.
This comment was originally posted on FriendFeed
Bwana
August 7th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
When I looked at the translation script, it seemed to only work with one language at a time… is that still true?
This comment was originally posted on FriendFeed
Bwana
August 7th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
My issue is, I get at least 5 different languages sometimes, and if I have to switch, it seems like it’s a lot of work you know?
This comment was originally posted on FriendFeed
Danny Minick
August 7th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
That whole page is not useful. I never see it. Always logged in and I have Twitter clients.
This comment was originally posted on FriendFeed
dregar
August 7th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Twitter Trending Topics: Are They Useful? http://bit.ly/3urOgb
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
Andre P. Siregar
August 7th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
It’s still useful because there’s nothing else like it for most users. Where else would you find what people are talking about right now? Friendfeed search is powerful but it doesn’t point out the trend. Yes, it is gamed and you see a lot of stupid topics often. But looking at the screenshot above, it’s informative to know why Bill Clinton/Euna Lee/Laura Ling are trending. Why Paula Abdul is being discussed, etc.
This comment was originally posted on FriendFeed