Twitter Trending Topics for 2009

As the year comes to an end, there's two than more weeks left but who's really counting, it's time to sit back and marvel at just how much we achieved in 2009. And if you're Twitter, you may even have a reason to be proud of yourself, the microblogging service exploded onto the scene and secured its foothold in the mainstream. Over the year, several topics got the most attention from the Twitterati and the site has now released the Top Twitter Trends of 2009 complete with Michael Jackson and #iranelection.

Twitter divided the trending topics into several categories, News Events, People, Hashtags and so on, and came up with a top 10 for each of them. In the News Events category, and likely on Twitter overall, topics about the Iran elections dominated coming in at number one, #iranelection, number four, “Iran” and again at number five with “Tehran.” Swine flu was also a popular topic, if popular is the right word for it, making it to number two and coming in again at number six.

“Among all the keywords, hashtags, and phrases that proliferated throughout the year, one topic surfaced repeatedly. Twitter users found the Iranian elections the most engaging topic of the year. The terms #iranelection, Iran and Tehran were all in the top-21 of Trending Topics, and #iranelection finished in a close second behind the regular weekly favorite #musicmonday,” Twitter's chief scientist Abdur Chowdhury wrote.

In the People category, Michael Jackson was on top, and most likely dominated the category considering the havoc news of his death played on the Internet as a whole. In Movies, Harry Potter managed to overtake the Twilight Saga's latest entry New Moon followed by some of the year's most popular movies, no real surprises here.

In the Technology category, Google Wave, the highly anticipated yet confusing communication and collaboration service, took the first place as it was a regular trending topic ever since it was revealed at the beginning of the summer, first as people wanted to know more about it and later looking for invites. The latest Mac OS X update Snow Leopard followed by Tweetdeck, the popular desktop and mobile Twitter client. The well received Windows 7 came in at just number four showing that Twitter folks sure love their Macs.

It sure has been a great year for Twitter, but it's looking at a tough 2010 despite still riding on the hype wave. Traffic has been stalling for the past months, at least in the US, and the service is just starting to get some revenue through partnerships and soon enough through the business accounts it plans on introducing. If it can pull it off and growth starts picking up again though, it may very well be another great year for Twitter.