Wikileaks Discussion Board

[funmaxus]

Is Twitter CENSORING Wikileaks?
http://www.buzzfeed.com/chrismenning/is-twitter-censoring-wikileaks

(Note: The article also had pictures of graphs, which I was too lazy to copy).

as of the morning of December 6th, 2010, roughly 1% of all tweets make mention of Wikileaks. None of top 10 Twitter Trending Topics even come close to that 1%.

Although Wikileaks makes up a larger overall volume than the current Trending Topics, the trends algorithm only accounts for interesting peaks; sudden inccreases that mark an emerging trend.

Twitter used to rank topic popularity by volume, but changed the algorithm after Justin Beiber's fanbase continued to account for roughly 3% of all Tweets in the spring of 2010.

By November 28th, Wikileaks had spiked sufficiently to show up on Twitter's Trends list. But because the volume of tweets has held relatively steady, it has worn out its welcome on the list, just like Justin Bieber.

It's not that Twitter is "censoring" Wikileaks. Wikileaks has simply succumb to the Bieber effect; becoming a part of the constant background noise just like love, hate, and Christmas.

To put it simply:

Twitter Trends favors novelty over popularity.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/chrismenning/is-twitter-censoring-wikileaks