trending_topic

This module extracts the individual words in the last 20 TSN Tweets, and compares them to all the Trending Topics in the original timeframe of the specific Tweet posts.

Twitter users will purposely search for and read specific Tweets on topics that they have an interest in, including those topics currently trending such as breaking news stories.

Because there is a positive action by Twitter users to seek out these topical Tweets, twam accounts will often affix one or more Trending Topic keywords to their spammy posts in an effort to catch more eyeballs to whatever service or product they are trying to promote.

Of the last 20 Tweets from this TSN, 3 included Trending Topics:

<trending_topic> 
	<date>1267309440</date> 
	<exec_time>24</exec_time> 
	<raw_data> 
		<tweets>20</tweets> 
		<topics>haiti, olympics, #followfriday</topics> 
		<total>3</total> 
		<percent>15</percent> 
	</raw_data> 
	<result>2</result> 
</trending_topic> 

TWASE stores all 20 Trending Topics from each hour of every day since the 24th December 2008 (as far back as Twitter can supply data).

Aside from this historical data, TWASE regularly updates a current cache of Trending Topics as they change in order to keep up with twam accounts which latch onto breaking news and events.

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