Twitter's trending topics list the top ten most tweeted topics on Twitter at any given time. But many times the topics aren't very clear. Looking at trending topics often confuses you more than it helps.
Clicking on a topic to see what people are saying about it doesn't always help either. When topics get in the top ten trenders, many tweeps (spammers, really) add them to tweets to make their tweets show up in searches, even though their tweets don't have anything to do with the topic. It is a problem that has been around for quite a while.
Enter Twitter's new feature: trending topics explained. When you search on a popular topic, Twitter displays a short description about it below the topic. Goodnight is a good example of a common trending topic at night (US Time). The image below shows Twitter's explanation of Goodnight.
One problem with trending topics explained is that not too many topics have explanations. We hope this will change in the future, as Twitter adds explanations to more topics.
Another problem is explanations are only for popular topics like Goodnight, which are common topics everyone is already familiar with.
Explanations would really be beneficial if they were added to current trending topics in real-time.
We think Twitter has something here. Let's hope that Twitter makes these explanations much more useful by adding them real-time, and adding them to many common and less-common topics.
Follow me on Twitter @mr_nolte
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Comments
Your explanations are so clear. Good read.
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