Curious Case of Twitter Trends.
Twitter trends are awesome. I often know it helps a lot to connect people to conversations that should be spoken about. But a recent case made me wonder. As to are the trending topics list and the search results corresponding to the same are related or relevant. What put me in wonder is a term “swami” trended in Twitter. I noted it was not a top trend then and just started trending.
When I go and check the tweets, I see tweets by Swami Paramtej ji, which looks from the past and makes me wonder why are the past tweets creating the present trend? When I clicked on the trending topic I assumed it should give me current and relevant results but it did not!
When I do a little research I get to know it is trending now in my location because someone who is verified in my location has posted something about it.
So in this case, it was the news article by NDTV.
But a single tweet was not responsible for the trend. It was supplemented by some people from different places across India sharing about the same keyword in NDTV tweet in record less time but since they might be not famous or verified accounts, so I don’t see their tweets but I see the topic trending.
So all I get to see when I click on the newly trending topic is, people who have tweeted about the topic in the past which may not look relevant or past tweets by people having the names similar to the topic. So in this case I see tweets from Swami Paramtej ji which are not relevant to the topic at all. The topic is sensitive though.
Since such a topic is gaining trend, so the search bar may not appear helpful to immediately inform you the reason of trend. You may have to dig further to examine the nature and sentiment of trend. Here also to note, Swami is a very generic word. It is definitely not the first time used. So when I go and check the trend and the top tweet section, it might show me the past tweets related to the same keyword. But since that reason was not discussed much I get to see tweets which were are not relevant to the topic but keyword was relevant.
I took a different example, If you look at a different and very generic trend like California. It just started trending. I am posting the result of top tweets and latest tweets.
But that looks so unrelated to why it is trending in my location.
So when I head over to News section I again find TOI writing about California article and the same effect of “Swami” triggered. Some set of non famous accounts tweeted super fast and made it trend.
This is not the first time when a section of the news article is trending. Apparently when petrol diesel prices had varied once, the price amount was trending. So in that case some number as 68 or 69 was trending at a lower spot.
As to why Swami Paramtej’s account appeared could be that Twitter is first showing news related to people we follow. So in this case the name is similar. In either of the tweets by Swamiji there is no mention of Swami word written. So the only reason why it showed up on my search results could be that Twitter took a wild guess that the trend is related to someone with the similar name whom I follow.
I think for someone who is not following Swamiji the results might be different.
This is a wild theory and you can try to check out various low ranking and generic trends which are gaining momentum in trend list and figure out yourself and compare results.
So to conclude, If gaining trends have tweets that don’t look relevant or revealing, check out the news sections and you will find some news firm have just begun talking about it. News firm are generally verified handles and tweets by verified handles turn into trends quicker and for that the conversations help — that is people from various locations tweeting about trending keyword in record less time. There is almost little to no gap when the original tweet has been posted.
As and when the conversation builds up for generic trends and catches up more locally, you will see meaningful tweets to the topic in your search sections.
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In case you have similar observations, please let me know, would like to hear. You can reach out to me directly through my twitter handle —www.twitter.com/swapnilbawane
