Maybe Twitter Trends Shouldn't Be Entirely Automated?
Over the weekend, Twitter's trending topics were once again the target of an attack, this time implemented by the members of the infamous image board 4chan, the site known for their internet memes and pranks. As with previous attempts to pollute the trends with nonsense, the hashtag pushed into the leaderboard was yet another inappropriate term. Last time this happened, we saw Twitter pull the offensive tags from the trends section, a move which prompted us to cheer: Twitter censoring trending topics? Isn't it about time? Again, it seems the company has pulled the same move. By the time tech blogs picked up the story, the term had disappeared completely from the trends section.
But maybe "trends" like this have no business ever making "trend" status at all. We have to wonder if censorship after the fact is going to be good enough for Twitter going forward. As Twitter continues to grow, more and more people will want to get their keyword or hashtag featured in this popular section of the Twitter Search site. Perhaps Twitter should consider putting a human editor in charge of weeding through the supposed trends before they get posted.
Twitter Censoring Trends: Is it Enough?
At the end of the day, we agree with Twitter's decision to pull the obviously forced hashtag from the trends section just as they did the last time a bunch of folks thought they would have some fun by tweeting other offensive words and phrases. But these incidents have made us wonder: has Twitter trends outlived its ability to function properly as an entirely algorithm-based service? Given how many people rely on Twitter trends to track hot topics and breaking news, the section will be under constant attack from those who want to use the algorithm for their own purposes...and not necessarily good ones.
In some cases, like the latest 4chan move, the term-made-trend will be a somewhat offensive, but ultimately harmless prank. In other cases, the trends will be courtesy of some marketer pushing their hashtag up through the ranks thanks to their latest "tweet-to-win" contest. But do either of these cases represent an organic news-based trend that deserves the spotlight? Perhaps not.
Although censorship isn't something that most people would normally support, in these cases it would feel less like censorship than it would a simple act of filtering. It's easy to see that "trends" like these aren't really the sort of trends that the section was meant to highlight. However, by letting the algorithm do all the work, everyone with an evil plan to get their hashtag into the leaderboard has a shot at 15 minutes of fame. And on the real-time web, that's an eternity.
If, on the other hand, Twitter started pre-filtering the trends for relevance, there would long be a reason for hoaxsters, pranksters, and other trend-hogging marketers to attempt to game the system. Just by putting a human editor in charge of Twitter trends, "fake trends" like these could easily be avoided. Even if the company didn't want to go with full-on censorship, they could at the very least move the "other" trends off the main page by adding a link that said "More..."
Filtered Trends Could Delay Breaking News
But the drawback to a human-filtered trends section could be a delay in seeing breaking news make trend status - and that would be a disaster for a service that's all about immediacy. For some people, even the threat of a delay such as this would probably have them saying, "forget censorship and filtering - I want real-time trends, legit or not!"
But to those people, we ask: what about when Twitter becomes so uber-popular that the real-time trends section you crave becomes filled with junk trends thanks to internet memes and marketers' messages? Will you still prefer it then?
We're not sure if a human editor is the right solution for Twitter, but one day soon, something will have to be done. One commenter on a previous post mentioned some other ideas for filtering trends and hashtag spam, including having users tweet "#spam=hashtag" and suggesting Twitter adds a feature which would let us block hashtags from our streams. Another commenter suggested Outlook-like rules for hiding certain hashtags. If you have any ideas of your own about what Twitter should do, feel free to share them in the comments.
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Trending topics is a joke. It targets people who have nothing interesting to say, telling them what is 'trendy' to be discussed right now.
Trending topics will probably be removed if twitter is ever to go international. people here in Europe don't really care (personally i don't even know) who Robert Mcnamara, Adam Lambert or Steven McNair is.
It's just a marketing ploy that appeals to celebrities and PR people.
@igniguy: you don't think they would just implement localized trends instead at some point?
While I really don't think Twitter should human edit trends - and obviously don't have a problem with the #moonfruit type stuff per your previous article - at the least it would seem Twitter should extend trending topics to a top 50 or 100, ala Google Trends, while continuing to delete spam/porn manually.
That would create more value (you'd actually get breaking news quicker by getting to see past the top ten) and make trending topics seem less worthless than when 4 out of 10 are short-lived memes or marketing campaigns, as seems to so often be the case lately.
A slightly different issue with algorithmically determined trending topics was made evident again recently when Firefox 3.5 was released. The trending topic algorithm caught "Firefox 3", but interpreted the period as punctuation and chopped of the 5. Seems like a little more human intervention would be appropriate in these cases as well.
I think I'm going to write a filter that scans the web in real time and posts all of the advice people are giving Twitter on how to run their business!
After working out the database issues w/ the following feature I'd suggest, why not have personalized trends...based on your "followed" feed, plus their followed feeds, extrapolated until there are enough members and you can add in the most followed "verified" members if you need more....
Global trending is one of the differentiators for Twitter. But a la digg, it's being reverse engineered....Is it fixable even?
@Adam You mean they should do something like... twitscoop?
;-)
I agree. Twitter should do it.
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@Adam: I too, would love to see Twitter extend the trending topics section. They could even do a hot this week, this month, this year section too!
But I really don't think that marketing pushes have a place in the trends or if they do, they need to be separated out from the "real" trends somehow. Hopefully Twitter is thinking about how this should be done.
I really don't like that Twitter is censoring trending topics. That's going in the wrong direction.
Localized trending topics is a good idea, but IMO what they really need to do is refine what "trending" is. They need to have different thresholds as part of their algorithm. What was interesting about the 4chan drama was, there really wasn't that many people who participated to make it happen. A few hundred. Maybe a thousand. Maybe.
If a thousand people tweet about something in an hour, that shouldn't be trending. Maybe it's 10,000. Maybe 100,000. I'm not sure what their actual traffic numbers look like.
At the same time, they need to account for actual "trends," where people are tweeting about stuff consistently throughout the weeks, months, etc.
The other thing that was interesting about this was that you got to see just how much spam was on Twitter. You could see all the bots making API calls and sending tweets with #gorillapenis just because it was a trending topic. Every single tweet coming from the API with that tag needs to be banned.
I love the idea of a human editing the Trending Topic areas. It works for major events (Iran, Michael Jackson), but there are other instances like Jordan Chandler where it's a total fake and someone just gaming the system.
Or, my favorite if you remember keyword stuffing, that if enough folks just do #whatever in their tweets, they can pop up on the trends bar to.
Good call Sarah.
I watched this develop in real-time. It was pretty interesting. I checked out /b/ in the morning before it happened, and started reporting on it ahead of time.
Despite the marketers and b-tards, I'm really uncomfortable with the idea of the trends being human-edited at all.
What I'd like to see instead is trends that are adjusted by where I am in the social graph:
Specifically, the trends of people no more than N hops away from who I'm following.
Posted by: erik.swanson.name
|
July 6, 2009 1:13 PM
http://www.frmclass.com
I think it's up to Twitter to monitor the trending topics and remove.
I wouldn't mind seeing a "vote off" icon beside each trending topic.
ex:
Maybe thousands of people like #musicmonday, but maybe tens of thousands more don't. If we could all vote off once a day a trending topic we don't like, it will disappear. Who know maybe #voteoff itself will become a trending topic.
joe and erik are on the right path. since twitter is all about your network why ruin it in trending by making it so generic? I follow people because their tweets are relevant to me, trending topics are extremely irrelevant, that's why I never look at them. Part of the beauty of twitter is that you can ignore people you just don't care about, like spammers. Having a real person editing trending topics would just be the equivalent to music top 40 charts and if you still believe those matter you should read this http://bit.ly/l8BJD (Chris Anderson's "The Long Tail")
"Without free speech no search for truth is possible... no discovery of truth is useful... Better a thousandfold abuse of free speech than denial of free speech. The abuse dies in a day, but the denial slays the life of the people, and entombs the hope of the race." -Charles Bradlaugh
Perhaps a bit dramatic for the topic, but it is a slippery slop folks...very slippery...
just saying
I think I'm going to write a filter that scans the web in real time and posts all of the advice people are giving Twitter on how to run their business!
And what about the pushing of #indonesiaunite by Indonesians after the July 17 bombings in Jakarta? Is that legit? I mean, most of the tweets are just Indonesians tweeting the hashtag to keep it on the trending topics list.
Some do try to post relevant tweets to the hashtag, instead of simply pushing it up, but still...
And what about #iranelections?
Thank you so much.
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Thank you so much.
Thanks for that.
I watched this develop in real-time. It was pretty interesting. I checked out /b/ in the morning before it happened, and started reporting on it ahead of time.
Really very good
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Well, I do not know whether all the things on internet should be modular, so, may be Twitter just need acts like Twitter.
You can easily and quickly find out who, what or which tweets are being censored by Twitter.
To see WHO Twitter Is censoring - Search for the user's name in Twitter Search. If that user only show ups in RTs, THEY ARE BEING CENSORED from Twitter Search and therefore from the Twitter Timeline.
You can also use this same method to see if Twitter is censoring YOU: Tweet then look for yourself in Twitter Search. If your tweet (or you) can not be found, or If you (or that tweet) only show up in RTs, YOU ARE BEING CENSORED from Twitter Search and therefore from the Twitter Timeline.
The question is: Where does it stop? And who is doing the deciding? Is it arbitrary, computerized, or is an individual(s) making these censorship decisions?