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UC Riverside students create website to track Twitter trends
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UC Riverside students create website to track Twitter trends
Did you know that World Cup soccer and the movie “Inception” are among the hottest topics on Twitter? A couple of UC Riverside students sussed that out when they created a new website that measures long-term Twitter trends.
Did you know that World Cup soccer and the movie “Inception” are among the hottest topics on Twitter? A couple of UC Riverside students sussed that out when they created a new website that measures long-term Twitter trends.
Twitter already posts its 10 most tweeted topics. It's a fleeting snapshot of what’s hot right now. But UCR senior Nick DiFilippo and classmate Tim Kelleher launched a new site called "Twend.it". It tracks the long- running popularity of news and pop culture milestones.
“We basically decided that a historic view of Twitter trends brings that much more information to it," says Di Filippo. "The very first person to really pick it up and push it out there was a Brazilian actor, basically a Twitter celebrity.”
That would be Felipe Neto, a young actor and wise-cracking internet sensation with over half a million Twitter followers and a popular YouTube channel.
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“And he used it for self-promotion when his name started trending worldwide he used us as a reference and cited us to add validity to say, 'hey look at me I’m trending worldwide,'" says Di Filippo. "Then the real big push has been reporters, people doing stories about Twitter and entertainment. So they use it as a source to talk about how popular Twitter’s gotten how it relates to box office performance, things like that.”
Last week, Forbes magazine cited Twend.it in an article about the movie “Inception” — apparently the film is the most tweeted pop culture happening in recent months. See what else is trending at Twendit.org.
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