Twitter Trends

I realise Twitter really isn't new, and I'm pretty late to jump on this bandwagon, but still...

I joined twitter yesterday, and while I have exactly zero followers (minus spammers), I have been keeping track of the trends which ebb and flow throughout the day. It's actually pretty interesting, and once you filter out all the "Buy Viagra pills here #click" and "Thank goodness its Friday" tedium, there's a lot of useful info to be found.

For example, the shear number of people who are constantly checking news sites, and twittering the interesting bits is pretty exciting. It means you can find out things ahead of the news sites themselves, which in this modern world of "I want everything, now" mindsets, means instead of going to look for news, it comes to you.

Well sort of. Very often, and I mean probably 99% of the time, the information you receive over twitter is a two word description, and a link to a news source. So really, the information is already researched, fact checked and uploaded, and all twitter is really doing is letting you know of news which has high interest. Nothing wrong with that, but not especially world changing.

I'm waiting to stumble across something ground-breaking. I was led to believe that twitter is full of people saying the sort of things that the big news corps refuse to talk about, or governments are avoiding attention of. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places, and I'll keep looking.

For the moment I guess I'm content to consider the implications that really, given all the myriad of events happening the world over, we'd really prefer to discuss that a road in Derby is going to be named after Lara Croft, or whether various footballers may be dropped or signed to various teams. I did enjoy the speed that a leaking fish-tank became worldwide news though.


As an aside, I've been thinking over the form this blog should take. Am I happy to simply say what's on my mind, or should I be taking a stance on certain opinions and arguing my case? I prefer impartial speculation myself, but perhaps for more interesting reading I should get excited and angry about things...

I'll try and find something to be passionate about for my next post.