Twitter Tuesday: Twitter vs. Justin Bieber Edition

Here we go with another Twitter Tuesday! I've got a few things to fill you in on about celebrities, apps and more from the past week, so get comfy and fire up your favorite Twitter client ...

The biggest Twitter news of the week affects young pop star Justin Bieber more than anyone else. Twitter has reworked the trending topic algorithm to show topics that are gaining popularity quickly, leaving out topics (like Justin Bieber) that hold steady at a consistently high level of popularity. Basically, everyone KNOWS Bieber is tweeted about constantly, so there's no value in letting him take up a slot on the trending topics.

Bieb-dogg (Justin, do you mind if I call you Bieb-dogg?) misunderstood the new policy at first, and sent an @reply to Twitter, asking why they were picking on his fans. Careful, Ev and Biz, you don't want to awaken the wrath of Bieber!


In non-Bieber-related news, the much-anticipated Twitter for iPhone may be about to arrive. Tweetie 2, the awesome app that Twitter bought and is converting into its official iPhone client, has disappeared from the App Store. That seems to me like a sure signal of Twitter for iPhone's impending arrival.

That's not the only mobile Twitter client story this week. Popular Twitter app Tweetdeck might be available as a mobile Web app soon. Tweetdeck says the app will use different stylesheets for each mobile platform, so it doesn't just look good in one browser. However, it's designed to be lightweight and run on basically any mobile phone with a browser. The first version out of the gate will be optimized for BlackBerry. [via AppScout]





Alex Payne, the lead developer of Twitter's API, is moving on from Twitter to join a social banking startup. His new project is called Banksimple, and it aims to be "a bank that doesn't suck." Payne was responsible for a lot of Twitter's infrastructure, and much of the API that allows awesome third-party apps to exist today. Good luck rocking the banking world, Alex, and thanks for your hard work in creating Twitter.

Speaking of Twitter developers, life just got a lot easier for them. Twitter now parses out hashtag and @reply information as part of its API, meaning that Twitter app developers no longer have to do it themselves. It's already leading to better results on Twitter Search, which now parses out Bit.ly shortlinks and looks for keywords on the linked page. Brilliant!

Hey, where did the time go? That's all I've got for Twitter Tuesday this week. I'll see you back here next Tuesday for more Twitter news. Don't forget to leave me some comments about what you'd like to see more (or less!) of in the column.

Tags: features, justin bieber, JustinBieber, trending topics, TrendingTopics, twitter, twitter tuesday, TwitterTuesday