04 July,2010 08:42 AM IST | | Lalitha Suhasini
Twitter can turn anything including a fake identity around into a trending topic. Social media hype has never been bigger. Lalitha Suhasini finds how Indian Twitter users are latching onto the hashtags, ever so slowly
Right this minute, the upcoming FIFA semi finals could be trending on Twitter. That's an easy guess, considering the world cup has been a hot topic since it kicked off last month, and was a number one topic all of last week, according to whatthetrend.com, a site that tracks Twitter trends.
Indian audiences won't be swayed by Twitter reviews of Bollywood films
or pre-release buzz, asserts trade analyst Vinod Mirani. Pic/Bipin Kokate
But it takes less than a global obsession to get there. You could tweak a super user's name around to keep him or her trending. Sixteen year-old Canadian popstar Justin Bieber's fans did that two months ago when Twitter decided to tweak its algorithm to make sure only current topics could appear on the trending topic list. So, when Bieber was knocked off the list, his fans tweaked his name around to Twieber and Jieber to keep Bieber in the hot list.
Can a trending topic be manufactured? Yes, but it's not easy. "Theoretically speaking, yes "trending" topics can be manufactured. If there is good concerted effort to use a number of different Twitter accounts and push out related content with a common hashtag (when a # symbol tags a tweet on a public user's site it calls for tweets on the same topic turning it around into a trending topic) in a very short time. Then, that hashtag could trend," explains Hareesh Tibrewala, joint CEO, Social Wavelength, an agency that creates social media strategies for entertainment channels like Star Plus.
Tibrewala likens trending to a democracy at work. "Considering the active user base of Twitter is not so large in India, it's possible to create a trending topic," he adds. According to Social Wavelength's guestimate, there are only about one million Twitter users in India. Of these, a handful of Bollywood celebrities (some of who like Farhan Akhtar and Deepika Padukone got hooked onto Twitter only to promote their last release Karthik Calling Karthik), cricketers and politicians contribute to trending topics. The user base isn't large enough to generate mass social media hype around films, argues trade analyst Vinod Mirani. "Twitter might work overseas but Indians don't even trust reviewers anymore. More and more Indians wait for public opinion."
Other professionals active in the online space add that Twitter in its new avatar has made it tougher for topics to trend. "It's important to ensure that the topic has enough viral value for it to get tweeted and retweeted around constantly in a very short span of time, which is easier said than done," says Navin Kansal, Creative Director, Digital, OgilvyOne Worldwide, Mumbai.
What's certain is that the smarter the tweet, the easier it is to generate buzz, whether it's viral or not. Take the case of 'Iconic Indian Ads', which was a top trending topic a few months ago, leading to Twitter discussions on classic Indian ads dating back to the '80s with no relevance to the current time and day, except for nostalgia value.
Non-mainstream Indian musicians too are slowly finding a toehold on Twitter. Randolph Correia, guitarist and producer for Mumbai-based rock band Pentagram, and electronica group Shaa'ir+Func agree that a trending topic can be manufactured with the right support and following. "The danger is that of a lot of artists could be faking their activities and this could be misleading for fans. For us especially, it has been a progression from MySpace to Facebook and now Twitter.
Most importantly, it's about keeping it as real as possible," says Correia, who posted links to new Shaa'ir+Func songs on Twitter last week.
"As Twitter grows and its ability to intelligently weed out 'manufactured trends' grows, it will be more and more difficult to make a topic trend," says Tibrewala. So, while Hindi film superstar Aamir Khan, who has one of the craftiest marketing minds in the business, vehemently denies joining Twitter for promotional reasons, we won't be surprised if his latest production Peepli Live begins trending. He's already mentioned Dhobhi Ghaat in one tweet and he's a week-old on the microblogging site.
The handbook
How to track Twitter trends
whatthetrend.com
Includes history of every trending topic, offers a weekly trend analysis and a list of Top 100 trending topics besides other trending details
tweetmeme.com
Throws up the most popular sites on Twitter across subjects from sports to comedy.
monitter.com
Tracks twitter trends in real-time. The site is more visual than www.whatthetrend.com, with information on each trend and the corresponding tweets in columns
tweetbeep.com
Tracks what others tweet about you or your blog, taking ego-surfing to the next level.
You can pay to hype
In April this year, Twitter added a Promoted Tweets functionality, which allowed companies to pay to promote themselves. Toy Story 3 was on this list last month, with a yellow Promoted tag next to it.
