Trending topic on Twitter

While not completely convinced of the value of a trending topic on twitter, besides an ego boost, its nevertheless a very question that we get asked by a lot of customers. It is usually asked in one of two ways:

“How many tweets does it take in a given time period to be a trending topic on twitter?” or

“How many people have to talk about this on twitter to make this topic appear as a top one on Twitter Search?”

First some quick facts and numbers so we can baseline over the last 7 days:

1. The average number of tweets per day is 1.9 Million

2. The average number of unique twitter users per day is about 631,737

3. The average number of unique twitter users online per hour is 48,233

4. The average number of unique tweets per hour is 83,394 and unique tweets / minute is ~ 1350

5. Number of unique trending topics per day is ~8900 (these are for one specific day, but average over the last 7 days is in this range). Trending topic has a “shelf life” of 11 minutes, most though are less than 5 minutes. N.B. There are 10 top trending topics shown on Search.Twitter.com at any time.
Unique Twitter users and tweets by hour

Unique Twitter users and tweets by hour

The million $ question of how many tweets it takes to trend depends on 2 things - # of people tweeting at the same time on topic and the hour of the day.

What other factors matter?

1. How many followers in total exist for the people online at that time? This will make it easier for that topic to be distributed quicker and hence trend faster on twitter

2. Nature of the topic - Breaking news, politics and technology related topics do very well on Twitter. We ignored inane (in our words) topics like Good night, tired etc.

3. Location of twitter users - this is a nature of time, but most twitter users are in coastal United States, Japan. If you wish to trend a topic on Twitter, during the timezone they are most active, you are better off talking about topics that interest them.

Assuming Pacific Standard Time, our research indicates:

Between 12 (midnight) to 6 am PDT: approximately 1200 tweets and about 500 users to be trending

Between 6 am to 12 Noon PDT: 1700 tweets and about 733 users

Between 12 noon to 6 pm: 1500 tweets and about 812 users (this may be because there are more people during this time but they tweet a lot less)

Between 6 pm to 12 midnight: 1900 tweets and about 922 users

Some points to note: These numbers will vary by nature of topic, date and appeal of topic worldwide. This gives you a rough estimate or a ballpark, but is not in anyway comprehensive.

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