Twitter’s Trending Topics Promotes Group Think

Twitter’s ability to aggregate and trend conversation is one of its core competencies.  In fact, I would go as far as to say that right now, Twitter’s Trending Topics (TTT) is its most powerful feature.  Where else can you see what millions of people are talking about at a particular point in time?

Despite the powerful mechanism, TTT has become a feature of diminishing value.  Why?  It’s simple:

Twitter’s Trending Topics Promotes Group Think.

twittergraphEvery single Twitter user sees the same exact TTT when they log into their account.  This makes it all too easy chime in to the ongoing debate.  Is this a bad thing?  Not necessarily — but it sure doesn’t help bring fresh, informative content to the forefront.

Additionally, there appears to be an inverse relationship between the number of Twitter users and the overall value of posts.  In other words, as the number of Twitter users rises, the odds of reading a worthwhile tweet diminishes.  This is one negative outcome to the “network effect” that Twitter has yet to address.

Do You Care About TTT?

twitter-trendingtopicsThis screenshot (pictured to the right) shows an example of TTT taken Sunday 7/19/09 22:00 EST.  Sixty percent (6/10) of the topics are related to various TV programs being shown during that time.  Granted, it’s a Sunday night and news stories are not exactly top priority, but still, it would be nice to see some more diversity.

What I Would Like To See:

  • group topics
  • “location-aware” topics
  • more filtering mechanisms
  • more diversity
  • Bertil
    I think you are missing the decentralised innovation model that has made Twitter's success so far. I use Twitter as an academic tool, and I would value group a lot; because I have an inter-disciplinary approach, very sophisticated suggestion engine would be great to understand apparently distant discovery that might interest me. Someone using it locally would love to have distance-based filters, etc. — and the “etc.” is the important part: by encouraging any filter (other then an abvious one) Twitter would choose a use, instead of letting third parties innovate.
  • I agree that Twitter is an absolutely amazing academic tool. Regarding its Trending Topics however, I believe Twitter can do more in terms of uncovering interesting developments. They have so much raw data to play around with, it still feels that they are complacent with the current 10 keyphrase model.

    Third party tools have made Twitter what it is today...no one will deny that. However, as I mentioned in the post, I would like to see a bit more done in the case of unearthing interesting developments. It's the aggregation in this particular case, that in my opinion, leads to stale, group think.
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