When looking at Twitter's trends one can find trends with hashtags:
- #NationalHugDay
- #danielholtzclaw
But also without it:
- Nats
- Patrick Kane
Why are there trends without a hashtag?
How are they created?
When looking at Twitter's trends one can find trends with hashtags:
But also without it:
Why are there trends without a hashtag?
How are they created?
Best Answer
Hashtags are a self-selected marker, but considering all of the data they have available they have tons of information about what people are tweeting about at any given time. As long as they can identify something as an actual "topic" and not just a couple of words that are adjacent in a sentence, this would be a candidate to be trending.
The algorithm behind this is part of Twitter's "secret sauce". They're not going to share the details because it's a competitive advantage and to prevent people manipulating the list for their own gain. They already have "social media consultants" trying to game the system so that their clients tweets end up on the list. If the details were known, it would quickly become useless. Twitter also has rules against this sort of thing:
A Twitter engineer, but one that doesn't work on Trends, says that the process is essentially:
The Official Twitter FAQ says:
Sources: