Have you ever opened your Twitter and found a subject or celebrity trending, mentioned on several tweets with no real explanation for the trend? Well, it happens quite a lot, and Twitter has decided to do something about it.
Twitter is now working to make these trends less confusing. The company recently announced that it would start pinning a representative tweet on the trend’s page to show users exactly what the trend is all about.
Twitter has today added that it will even start writing headlines and descriptions of some of the trends to help users understand why something or someone is trending.
Read: Twitter Unveils New “Quote Tweet” Feature
For example, if you go on Twitter today, you will find ‘Nelson Havi’ trending. Twitter will now explain using a headline why the LSK president is trending using a short summary explaining the banter with Njeri Thorne and add some representative tweets that originated the trend. This means that even if you are hours late into the party, you can still catch up with what is happening without having to scroll through hundreds of tweets.
However, not all trends can be so easily explained, especially those started with a hashtag. #Influencerchallenge #RutoMustgo #Ijustdontbelieve and so much more do not stem out of a single tweet or contain specific explanations, making it difficult to annotate them. In most cases though, Twitter trends contain real News items.
Read also: Twitter to Label Confusing or Misleading Tweets
In a single day, as few as five or many as 20 trending items can appear on the trending section. It is still not clear how Twitter will pick which trends to annotate.
“If a trend is particularly confusing and a lot of people are talking about it, it may get a pinned Tweet or a description,” a Twitter spokesperson said.
The company said that it hopes to contextualize more trends over time.
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