Twitter Trending Project- Day 3

#Gourmet, #Cookie, #Elegantbride – Oh My!
In the wee hours of the morning, Gourmet, Cookie and Elegant Bride were trending on Twitter. Why? The New York Times announced today that these Conde Nast publications are closing. Declines in advertising pages continue to impact the longevity of Conde Nast, as they closed Domino and folded Men’s Vogue into Vogue this past year, according to the NY Times report. Can we please say it again? #Saveprintnews

Throughout the day, #Gourmet has been the one publication to outlast the others in the trending topics. No wonder, though—it’s been around since the 1940s!

#Woolworths
Numerous tweets spread across the feed in support of Australian retailer Woolworths' re-branding efforts, but apparently it looks a bit too much like Apple-- and that’s what the fuss is about. Though, the majority of Twitterers think Apple is being a bit too much of a bully and a little paranoid. One guy’s sarcastic tweet says it all. Still, Woolworths is getting sued in hopes that they will cease and desist in making 3-D green apple peels remotely resemble a silver one with teeth marks.

Seeing as how Apple is so huge, I don’t think this is doing them any favors. It’s like David vs. Goliath and I think, unfortunately, David is going to lose--thus the bully moniker. What do you think of this trending topic and the future of Woolworths. Woolworths? They’re still around?!


#TMobileSucks
It’s always fun when cell phone providers get thrown under the bus, specifically when unhappy customers trigger responses in other people that are, well, unhappy customers too and want everyone to know that #TMobileSucks.

We found that it’s not T-mobile in general that sucks; rather, the SideKick. A data outage continues to enrage Sidekick owners. The slamming of the smartphone is all over Twitter and everyone’s joining in by mentioning the brand in general-speak, too.

According to users and the Danger service reps of T-Mobile Sidekick, what aren’t available are e-mail, Internet, and contacts. Well, yeah, I’d be ticked too if those were the services that have been down for 4 days. I guess Catherine Zeta-Jones will have to find a new company to endorse now unless T-Mobile continues to not address the millions of Twitter users who have made this a HUGE trending topic.

Day 2- Twitter Trending Project

topic # 1-- #WeLoveGaGa

exploration:

For the most part, news and Friday leads the trending topics today... Wait no.. is that tween pop culture in the mix? From around 11:30 am to 12:30 pm #WeLoveGaga trended with the Olympics, Google Wave, David Letterman and Friday related verbiage. From 11:50 to 11:51 am 833 tweets with the hashtag came through. 100 pages of search.twitter.com resulted in only an hours worth of tweets. We were confused, why love Lady Gaga now? Why not at the VMAs when she sported five beyond haute couture outfits? Are fans just having a random surge of Lady Gaga passion?

the.truth.

It really began with Sir. Perez Hilton’s twitter account. Perez has 1,510,756 followers and around 10:30 he tweeted…

From here gaga enthusiast groups GagaNews, Gagadaily, LadyGaGaPlease, gagatribe, and the houseofgaga all began encouraging retweeting and tweeting the hashtag. Soon Twitter exploded with Gaga fans and tweets. “Ironically” this trending and attention comes at a perfect time for Gaga. Gaga has had new stuff and bad luck lately…

1. Her tour with Kanye West “Fame Kills” fell through today and Lady Gaga announced she will be going solo for a tour. While officially the tour was canceled due to “artistic differences”, rumors are circulating that ticket sales “sucked.”
2. Gaga will be performing her new single “Bad Romance” for the first time on SNL tomorrow night.

Several of the fans who tweeted mentioned several times that the purpose of tweeting and RT was to get #WeLoveGaga onto the trending list. So, we will end with a question, Does it defeat the purpose of the trending list if people are hashtagging just to get it on the list?

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

What Did You Have for Lunch Today? A Lesson in Social Media.

This Daily Axioms post is courtesy of Nicholas G. Porter, a young and upcoming PR pro and social media junkie.

Today for lunch, I had a cheese sandwich, celery sticks and a bottle of Dasani water. Did I just commit a twitter faux pas?

According to Shel Israel, author of Twitterville: How Businesses Can Thrive in the New Global Neighborhoods,” I did not. Israel explains:

“…Twitter lets people behave online more closely to how we behave in real life than anything that ever preceded it in history. It's kind of past now, but there was this whole wave of admonition of nobody cares what you had for lunch, and to be honest that's absolutely false. If I said that I was in a restaurant in Atlanta, [Georgia,] you'd say, "Oh, where did you go? You didn't by chance try the..." and we have a conversation that way. We care about the details of life. When you bring this into business, I don't think many members of your audience ever bought or sold anything from a conversation that starts with, "Are you going to buy something?" It begins with small talk."

While I agree that Twitter allows a new kind of conversation in business, I disagree with the notion that the Social Media Elite is done holding the “what I just had for lunch” tweet in disdain. This is because like many, they would like to see more people using Twitter to spread useful information instead of pointless babble. However, you have to admit that Israel makes an excellent point about consumer relations and that acting natural is key. So maybe sharing what you had for lunch shouldn’t automatically delegate you to the 9th ring of social media hell?

After all, the social media experts all say the same thing; Twitter and social media does not work unless you are honest, friendly and let your personality shine through. The details of our lives do matter. So is it possible that the SM Elite have been talking out of both sides of their mouths?

What do you think? In the meantime, here is what I’m having for dinner…