Los Angeles — In a surprising turn of events, micro-blogging outfit Twitter is hard at work redefining the word “trend” for each of its 140 million users, gradually rolling out personalized trends, a feature that chooses your trending list topics based on where you are located and who you follow, Twitter Product Manager Sara Masuskopf wrote in the company’s blog today.
The micro-blogging network, which disclosed the change in a blog post, said that Twitter Trends will, by default, reflect topics that are popular at a given moment on Twitter’s website. The feature appears in a box on the left-hand side of the landing page. The new personalized Trends will appear on the Discover, Search, and Home pages (as usual) on Twitter’s website and in its mobile applications for iPhone and Android as well.
“Before, the Trends algorithms were not affected by these signals,” a Twitter spokesperson informed VentureBeat. “The Trends algorithms will continue to discover topics that are immediately popular, rather than topics that have been popular for a while or on a daily basis, to help you find the hottest emerging topics of discussion on Twitter that matter most to you.”
Twitter users currently see site-wide trends. The customized lists will be the default for the site and mobile apps, giving users a choice of more than 150 locations, including 34 countries and nearly 60 major U.S. cities. Users can customize the feature by geographic region, but the information is not currently filtered to reflect a particular user’s interests as expressed by the feeds he or she follows. To change the setting back to worldwide trending, change the location by clicking on the link at the top of your trends list.
“Trends offer a unique way to get close to what you care about,” Mauskopf said.
In fact, this latest update comes about a month after Twitter unleashed a new version of its “Discover” tab, which attempts to deliver relevant news stories to users, based on tweets from people followed by the primary account holder.
Of late, Twitter has been pretty busy pushing out updates, including a revamped company logo, all while relocating to its new Market Square headquarters.
The changeover will occur “gradually,” according to the company’s blog post.