Well, while my image above isn’t great, it was a snapshot taken at 11:50, 2/26/2016, in which “#whichHillary” remains a trending topic. (Below GOPDebates and MelissaClick.. and will probably soon be surpassed by Drop Luke to Free Kesha, but that’s another story).
So, how does the twitter system work? Well, first, you need to realize the “trending” list is not controlled by humans. The Twitter trending system is the product of a complex algorithm that looks for a few key things:
How often something is being tweeted as a hashtag Weight for that hashtag User Interaction with that hashtag non-interaction with hashtag The region in which the hashtag is trending. Note: today, I’m watching the St. Louis region in my feed.So, I just want to say this because sometimes we go through the rabbit hole. Twitter keeps track of thousands of regions throughout America and divides up trending topics for that region. It’s why stories like SJR in Missouri will likely start trending, and probably nowhere else. This is a metric method of keeping track of “popular in your area”. You can get even more in-depth with hashtag trending at hashtag.org.