If like the rest of us in the office you are tired of seeing Justin Bieber constantly topping the Twitter trending topics, you may be glad to know that it may be the last time the tweens and teens will be able to get their favourite popstar to the top of the trending topic list on Twitter for weeks on end!

Trending topics were initially introduced to reflect the most popular topics that Twitter users were tweeting about. However because the trending topics related to popular topics, these became dominated by some of the same consistently discussed topics on Twitter, like Justin Bieber, which has been tweeted most regularly for a long period of time. For many including me, this had begun to de-value the trending topic feature.

One of my favourite things about Twitter is being able to see what is going on in the world just by looking at trending topics that reflect what Twitter users are talking about at that moment. As one of my followers re-tweeted, it is a superb way of finding out all the latest news in a very small space of time.

So it is annoying that some of the more recent topics are being kept off the trending topics by other topics that had been more popular but over a longer period of time, keeping the more immediate topics off the trending list.

In response to the Bieber Twitter phenomenon, Twitter announced on Friday 14^th May that it is changing the trending topics algorithm. Here is what the developers at Twitter said:

“Twitter is about what is happening right now, and we have recently updated our trending topics algorithm to reflect this. The new algorithm identifies topics that are immediately popular, rather than topics that have been popular for a while or on a daily basis, to help people discover the "most breaking" news stories from across the world. (We had previously built in this 'emergent' algorithm for all local trends, described below.) We think that trending topics which capture the hottest emerging trends and topics of discussion on Twitter are the most interesting. While this is very much a work in progress, with this tweak we have taken a big step toward capturing how trends quickly emerge and grow on Twitter. We also think it's compelling to know what the "most popular" topics are, and we will look to capture this in some way in the future.

It is important to note that this new algorithm does not "block" any topics from trending. If topics you saw regularly in your Trending Topics menu have disappeared or are not showing as consistently as before, do a saved search for them on your homepage. That way, in one click, you can view search results for topics that matter most to you. Also consider localizing your Trending Topics menu, as shown below.” 

Well said Twitter! They even sent a tweet to Justin Bieber to explain the changes after the complaints from his fans. Although they said that it was a planned change and not a direct response to the high volume of Justin Bieber tweets.

But I'm afraid that we may be celebrating a little too early as the Bieber fans seem to have found ways round the new trending topics criteria. Instead of just tweeting about 'Justin Bieber' they have invented new trending topics related to Justin Bieber such as 'Twieber' and 'Jieber.' By leaving out the whole phrase 'Justin Bieber' the Twitter system judges it as a completely new topic unrelated to 'Justin Bieber.'

The trending topics on Monday 17th May showed the affect of the new topics created by the Bieber fans already.

Justin Bieber has even responded to what his fans have been doing.

We'll see how long they can keep this up but hopefully it is just a short lived response to the changes.