14 DAY TRIAL // Twitter has been coming under fire recently for allegedly blocking trends related to WikiLeaks, the whistleblower site that's been getting quite a lot of attention for the past few days.
The company has defended itself saying that the fact that hashtags like #wikileaks and #cablegate were not among Twitter Trends, despite the interest, had to do with the trend algorithm and nothing else.
Specifically, Twitter said that Trending Topics aren't necessarily the most popular topics on Twitter at any given time, rather they are topics which are getting an unusual amount of interest.
Yet doubts continued and Twitter has now taken to its blog to explain the issue, hopefully, once and for all.
"This week, people are wondering about WikiLeaks, with some asking if Twitter has blocked #wikileaks, #cablegate or other related topics from appearing in the list of top Trends," Twitter wrote on its blog.
"The answer: Absolutely not. In fact, some of these terms, including #wikileaks and #cablegate, have previously trended either worldwide or in specific locations," it said.
Twitter has been saying this for a few days now, either in blog comments or semi-official statements, yet the subject kept coming back. This is not the first time there have been discussions about why a certain topic is trending or isn't trending.
"Twitter Trends are automatically generated by an algorithm that attempts to identify topics that are being talked about more right now than they were previously," Twitter explained.
Twitter says that Trends are just that: trends. They don't really have to do with the 'amount' of popularity of a subject, but how it changing. The aim is to help people discover breaking news, interesting developments or simply what has gotten the people in a region rilled up at any one point.
"Put another way, Twitter favors novelty over popularity," Twitter added. "Sometimes, popular terms don’t make the Trends list because the velocity of conversation isn’t increasing quickly enough."