Twitter has rolled out localised trending topics to all users, in an attempt to make them into a useful tool rather than a spam-riddled, moronic hashtag-spackled irrelevance stinking up our Twitter.
Trending topics are words or phrases that are being used by lots of tweeters, appearing on the right-hand side of your home page. As well as the global list, there are now national lists for Brazil, Canada, Ireland, Mexico, and the UK and US. Cities include Baltimore, LA, New York and San Francisco. London and São Paulo are the only new non-US cities, with more to follow.
At the time of writing, localised trending topics are still newborn and Bambi-legged, blinking and bewildered in the weak sunlight. It seems they're yet to be spammed, but they are something of a self-fulfilling prophecy: London's trending topics include the words 'trending', 'topic' and 'Danny Dyer'.
Bargain-basement diamond geezer Dyer is mostly trending because of pwoper nawty mugs asking why Danny Dyer is trending. That's a bit like casting Danny Dyer in a film investigating why Danny Dyer is in every British film of the last ten years. Seriously though, he's trending because of BBC3 show I Believe in UFOs: Danny Dyer, which is every bit as brilliant as it sounds. I want to believe, you slaaaaag.
Other ways to see what people are talking about include a new Hot Topics feature on Google Trends. This gives you information about what people are typing into the search engine, like this iTablet everyone's getting so het up about. Although this only lists hot topics in the US, you can drill down into specified search terms to see where people around the world are searching for the subject you're interested in.
This is how we discovered that we have a surprising number of users in Stevenage. Consequently, we will be entering into a strategic media partnership with the Stevenage Comet to include more news from the Stevenage, Letchworth, Hitchin and Baldock area, including traffic updates on the A1(M) and coverage of Stevenage Borough's Blue Square Premier League title bid.