Another December day, another end of year list. This Twitter top trends list, arguably more than the others, is a particularly well-rounded summary of the spirit of 2010, summarising all 25bn tweets sent this year and breaking down the biggest trending topics by category.
After being accused of suppressing trends like #demo2010 for the student protests in the UK and even #wikileaks, Twitter last week explained how its trending data is calculated. Rather than assessing the volume of mentions for particular subjects, it ranks the amount of new mentions, and so tries to represent the fastest breaking news.
Overall trends give a fair mix of big news stories and major films, and the dash of tech interest can't be a surprise on a network like Twitter. Our German cephalopod friend also made the list, RIP. Wikileaks rightly made number seven in the top ten news events of the year, and no surprise that Justin Bieber topped the list of trending people of the year. Julian Assange snuck in at number four.
Overall top trends
1 Gulf Oil Spill
2 FIFA World Cup
3 Inception
4 Haiti Earthquake
5 Vuvuzela
6 Apple iPad
7 Google Android
8 Justin Bieber
9 Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows
10 Pulpo Paul
The top ten hashtags of the year are a little less predictable, though the list is stuffed with the sentimental or faintly amusing stuff of true web time wasting; top was #rememberwhen, with #haveyouever and #icantlivewithout also making the top ten.
Much like Google's Zeitgeist, I can't help but think the list was a little sanitised - are we really all so well behaved on Twitter? Isn't there a dark Twitter top list of 2010?
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