MetaTrends

What is it?

MetaTrends collects trends from the popular social media site Twitter.com and categorizes them based on their content. It does this for five countries around the world to emphasize how different demographics use Twitter differently. For example, in Israel, a relatively high proportion of trends are political in nature, while in the United States, trends about movies and television are more common.

The Categories

• Movies, TV: video media, including movies, television, YouTube videos, and actors and actresses
• Music: songs, bands, and music events
• Sports: sporting events, teams, and athletes
• Science: discoveries, progress, and events in the scientific community
• Politics, News: politics, international affairs, and current events

How does it work?

MetaTrends categorizes each trend by counting category-specific keywords in tweets about the trend and then placing the trend in the category with the most keyword hits. The category breakdown is displayed and reset daily, so that the breakdown is roughly indicative of what was happening in that country on that day.

Why is it important?

By showing a daily breakdown of Twitter trends, Metatrends allows one to see at a glance what sorts of things people are tweeting about on a particular day. The chart of averages gives a good comparison of how different geographical regions use Twitter differently, but it also provides a baseline; by comparing daily breakdowns with these baselines, one can see if something out of the ordinary or significant is happening in a particular region. This is the really interesting part of Metatrends; because people regularly tweet about news, any deviations from the normal breakdown of trends indicates some news: do a google news search for the region and category that have spiked, and one can see exactly what's happening. The spikes show that while Twitter is at its core a social media platform, it has also taken on a role as a place to share and read about news of all kinds.

Resources

• Twitter for trend data
• Python Twitter Tools by @sixohsix for accessing Twitter's API
• faviconit.com for generating favicons