Thursday, October 1, 2009

Twitter Trending Project- Day 1

topic #1-- #quanda
exploration:
What is qanda? As we scrolled through the tweets the conversation topics went from gay rights to Christopher Hitchens and religion to a graduates special issue… wait what? We thought qanda was a term relating to atheists or gay rights… where did this graduates issue come in? Then we stumbled upon this tweet….

Kritz29 @LasyaC hey, #qanda actually means q and a!! haha and all this time we thought it meant sumthing sick.. Hehehe
7 days ago from web

the.truth.
Maybe we didn’t think it meant something “sick”, but we thought it meant something. Twitter’s unusual topics such as #MoneyAintAThang, evoke elaborate fantasies that make us believe there are hidden meanings all over Twitter. Sorry to say folks, qanda is just q and a. Deal with it.

This all stems from ABC Australia. At 9:30 pm October 1, 2009 there was a Q&A panel discussion live from their TV studio including Anne Henderson, Sally Warhaft, Father Frank Brennan, Waleed Aly, and Christopher Hitchens. The show tweets out announcements on its Twitter page with 1,224 followers. The show sparked strong reactions throughout the Twitter Community which is why around 8:30 am CST Anne Henderson also became a trending topic.

topic #2-- #why
exploration:
#why? Why not! It seems that people think other people are listening and what that calls for is a lot of why this and why that tweets, not necessarily conversation. We've been following this trending topic for quite some time and have found tweets ranging from "Why do women stay with evil men who hate them?" to Why am I waking up with someone's elbow in my face." The major state of mind was just the need to tell people why; almost like pleas for change or a call-to-action. There also seemed to be the need to just rant about anything that came to mind. See what we mean?

Might I add that I agree with this guy's Twitter bio...

the.truth.

#why can't be better spelled out than by visiting here. Ladies and gents-- why is just why and can be multi-interpreted. No wonder #why this has been trending all day.


Announcing the 30-day Twitter Trending Project


It’s October (at least that’s what everyone's saying on Twitter) and in the spirit of a new month, Sara and I are announcing a new social media endeavor called the 30-day Twitter Trending Project right here on our blog. Why?

It never ceases to amaze us how many people check the Twitter search feed on a topic that’s trending and tweet out, “Why is [blank] a trending topic?” hashtag and all. While the comment appears on the feed, it doesn’t really add value to the feed. Here’s where we come in.

For 30 days, we’ll be your Wikipedia (not counting weekends--we’ve got plans). Sara and I will pick out the odd, rare and newsy topics that are trending on Twitter providing you all the juice as to why it’s trending and all the hearty analysis…but we’re no Dan Zarrella.

To give you an idea as to when we’re watching the Twitter trends, we’ll start first thing in the morning when we arrive at our desks at 8 a.m and will post summaries by end of day every day. Come Halloween night, we’ll provide a summary of what we found to be the major topics of conversation and why it may or may not be a frightening find.

You can check out our blog every day to see the results. Feel free to participate in the 30-day Twitter Trending Project by adding your own two cents as to why certain topics are trending either by sharing your own blog entries or commenting on ours.

Stay tuned for TTP- Day 1 and our TTP Pumpkin...

Tim and Sara