Hot topics on Twitter

Twitter, even with its 140 character word limit, is not just a tool for keeping in touch with friends, for making new friends, or for marketing products but also an effective news search engine. Twitter’s ‘Trending Topic’ list, which shows the top 10 most popular terms in global tweets of that day, highlights the most discussed topics online.Thus, Twitter as a medium of information, hands the power to the user to decide what is ‘newsworthy’.
The last couple of days saw ‘Google Wave’, ‘World AIDS day’, ‘New Moon’ and ‘Tiger Woods’, ‘Chris Brown’ and ‘Christmas’ trending. Even Indian’s celebrated with ‘Sehwag’ featuring on the list last week. Priyanka Kartari, 21, student, says, “The trending topics list is useful if you want to find out international news because key words of top headlines feature on this list,” she says and adds, “Google had released this free, global Public DNS, which I could use to speed up my Internet and better my security settings. I got to know about it only because it was a trending topic.”
Displayed on its search homepage and also as a sidebar in other pages, the list gives you a feel of what’s buzzing on the Net. Sometimes, it not only provides international news updates but also publicises a regional event. “The intriguing Amanda Knox murder trial which is hot news in UK hardly got coverage in India,” says Natasha K, a 22-year-old law criminal law student, “But it turned up on ‘trending topics’, I could also, be a part of the whole drama and discuss it in class,” she adds.
However, abuse follows the use of every tool. Recently, trending topics has also fallen victim to spams advertising Viagra, and random pick up lines, thus undermining its purpose. “Thanks to meta-tagging, I never track trending topics because most of the list is spam,” says Chenthil Mohan, 25, tech expert, “I prefer valuable content from reliable sources. And it is only those people and their tweets which I follow.”
The ‘tweeple’ are also aware that as a one-to-many news communicator, Twitter is not always a reliable micro-sharing service and it can lead to unverified claims and incomplete stories making the rounds. Kabir Verma, 23, VFX artist, who follows Barkha Dutt, Rajiv Masand and Sonam Kapoor on Twitter, opines, “Since the trending topics are comment based, the tweets offer a personal and subjective point of view. News through an official medium gives you factual details. Unless you do not know the facts, you cannot be subjective. So, while Twitter’s trending topics’ is a good supplement to traditional news medium, it can never replace it.”