Twitter Doing Their Best to Stop #Justin Bieber from Getting "Richer"

As has been discussed in several posts, there is a lot of evidence of "the rich getting richer" in the world of technology and the internet. Nothing may have made a stronger case than the #Bieber-dominated world of Twitter's Trending Topics. When you log in to Twitter next to your updating list of recent tweets by the people you follow, there is a list of ten words or phrases that are "trending" on the micro-blogging site. These topics are showing up here because they are the most tweeted subjects at the time. Click on one of the topics, and it's easy to see how the "rich get richer" concept applies. Many of the tweets about that topic aren't about the topic itself, but about the fact that it is trending. So when "#Carmelo Anthony" is trending, many tweets are announcing to the world the that it's trending, or asking why it is. So it is much easier for a trending topic to continue trending.

Now anyone who has a Twitter account is probably well aware of the king of Trending Topics, boy wonder/pop sensation Justin Bieber. Many say he was discovered with the help of sites like Twitter and YouTube, and his fans are certainly using them to keep him in everyone's mind. A year ago it would be hard to imagine signing on to Twitter and not seeing Bieber's name as a Trending Topic. As his popularity builds, more tweets, and with more tweets, more popularity. The cycle continued in a way that any fame-hungry superstar could only dream of.

However, a little less than a year ago, the people running Twitter made changes to the Trending Topics algorithm in an effort to prevent topics like #Bieber from exponentially growing. Now instead of a function based on the cumulative tweeting about a topic over an extended period of time, the period has been shortened and repeated references are less likely to trend over and over again. A quote from the Twitter Help section explains it pretty well:

“The new algorithm identifies topics that are immediately popular, rather than topics that have been popular for a while or on a daily basis, to help people discover the ‘most breaking’ breaking news from across the world. (We had previously built in this ‘emergent’ algorithm for all local trends, described below.) We think that trending topics which capture the hottest emerging trends and topics of discussion on Twitter are the most interesting.”

This was great news if you're sick of Justin Bieber. The news is not so great for those using Twitter Trending Topics to explain the "rich get richer" concept. The exponential growth in popularity that is explained by the power law distribution explains that the more popular someone or something is, the easier it is for them to become even more popular. As for Trending Topics, the exponential growth in the popularity of #Justin Bieber probably would have cemented his place in that right column.  However, the people in charge at Twitter decided to remove the exponential nature of that growth, and they may have stopped #Bieber from being a Trending Topic for all eternity.