Inquiry: Review Trendsmap (trendsmap.com)

Inquiry: Review Trendsmap (trendsmap.com) for the top Twitter trends on a particular day. Investigate some of the stories and tweets, and reflect on this on your blog.

Questions to consider are:

1) What are the top stories in your area?2) What is the relationship between the tweets and news stories in local media (if any)?
4) Can you find evidence that tweets are being used in news stories?
5) Can you find evidence of tweets being used by organisations to promote an event of issue?

You should make an effort to screen capture tweets that may be relevant to your discussion and embed them in your blog

(see skitch.com if you don’t have screen capture on your computer).

Trendsmap - What is it and how do I use it?

The easiest way to explain will be to take a direct quote from the FAQ section of the website.

“I still don't get it, how do I use this site?
You start with a view of your region where you can see the trending topics. You can scroll the maps by dragging to another area, or zoom in or out using the plus/minus icons. When you see something that looks interesting click on that topic for more information such as graphs of the volume of tweets locally vs. worldwide, what the topic is most likely about, images, links, and most recent tweets. You can also see where else this topic popular by clicking on the topic within the detail display, or what else are people tweeting about at this location by clicking on the location name (Trendsmap, 2013).”

Trendsmap – is basically a map that shows where the most popular “tweets” are coming from.  For newcomers to social media, a “tweet” is what the social network site (SNS) Twitter calls the posts it's users make. The posts are usually accompanied by the # symbol and this word is then transformed into a clickable link.  Users can hashtag (#) whatever and whoever they like and that word can then be searched by users to see what others are saying about that word (Hinton & Hjorth, 2013, p. 51).

In my home town there is very little on the map, however the surrounding areas are exploding with “tweets” about #Wimbleton. And after a little more searching on the net it isn't hard to see why; Aussie Sam Stosur has won the mixed doubles at Wimbledon (ABC, 2014).

Trendsmap screenshot of the east coast of Australia

And because the game was broadcast on 7 Sport, #7Sport is tagged in a lot of tweets to do with the event.

News sites are making good use of twitter.  On some TV broadcasts, news and other television program hosts, encourage users to “tweet” their opinion to the program (Whitaker, et al., 2012, pp. 287, 288).

This hash tag idea is becoming popular on other SNS’s since Twitter made them so popular.  Try posting on Facebook with a #Wimbleton and see what kind of results you find...  



REFERENCES
ABC, 2014. ABC news: Wimbledon: Samantha Stosur wins mixed doubles title alongside Nenad Zimonjic. [Online] 
Available at: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-07/stosur-wins-wimbledon-mixed-doubles/5575818 [Accessed 7 July 2014].

Ames, K., 2014. Module 2: media writing as a product , Course notes, COMM 11007 Media Writing: CQUniversity e-courses, http://moodle.cqu.edu.au/.

Hinton, S. & Hjorth, L., 2013. Understanding social media. London: SAGE Publications.

Trendsmap, P. L., 2013. Trendsmap FAQ. [Online] Available at: http://trendsmap.com/about-faq [Accessed 7 July 2014].

Whitaker, W. R., Ramsey, J. E. & Smith, R. D., 2012. Meda Writing, print broadcast and public relations. 4th ed. New York: Routledge.

EDIT: 13th August 2014.  The news of Robin William's passing is on every news channel and all over social media.  I went a took another snapshot from trendsmap.