theEweekly Wrap

Friday, July 31, 2009 by Tom Mason

Premier tweets

Tottenham Hotspur footballer Darren Bent is facing disciplinary proceedings after posting a series of controversial allegations on his Twitter feed. The striker has come under investigation after he appeared to criticise the management of his proposed transfer from Tottenham to Sunderland.

Bent delivered his dissatisfaction via a series of posts this week on the social networking site.

“Do I want to go to Hull City. No. Do I want to go to Stoke. No. Do I want to go to Sunderland. Yes.”

The transfer of the England striker is ongoing as the two clubs finalise a fee for the player. “Why can’t anything be simple? It’s so frustrating hanging around,” Bent allegedly wrote in another post.

A spokesperson for Tottenham said that an investigation was ongoing as to the authenticity of the account.

“We have put calls in to Darren’s agent. We are trying to establish whether the Twitter account is actually Darren’s. If it turns out to be Darren, we’ll deal with it as an internal matter.”

What the butler saw

IAC, the parent company of search engine Ask.com reported an overall decline in revenue of 4 per cent. Ask.com, which recently reincorporated its previous butler branding, saw a 10 per cent dip in revenue. A statement by the company said that revenue per query declined because users were taking fewer clicks to find what they were searching for.

Ask.com suffers revenue decline

CPCs and robbers

New data has revealed that pay-per-click (PPC) fraud has fallen by eight per cent. Click Forensics found the year-on-year percentage of click fraud had dropped 22 per cent.

Tom Cuthbert, president of Click Forensics said that search engines were becoming more vigilant against PPC fraud.

“The increased diligence of online ad networks to detect and block invalid traffic sources has contributed to the decline in the overall click fraud rate this quarter. Ad networks should still pay close attention in the coming months,” he said.

Making the umissable, unmissable

The BBC has signed a deal with four media groups to share video content. The deal, which includes the Daily Mail & General Trust, Guardian News & Media, Telegraph Media Group and Independent News & Media, will see the BBC provide a range of video news content to the various online outlets of the participating companies. The content will not be available outside the UK.

“We regard this initiative as a core part of the BBC working more effectively as a public service partner, with other media organisations utilising BBC news content,” explained Mark Byford, deputy director general and head of journalism at the BBC.

“Audiences are increasingly expecting news content to be available wherever they are, rather than always having to navigate to destination sites. We hope this wider distribution will extend audience reach to BBC content.”

News in 140 characters:

• Whitehouse employees have been banned from using Twitter at work. Officials have said the micro-blogging software decreases productivity.
  
• Tory leader David Cameron apologised for swearing during a live breakfast radio interview. Cameron swore during a discussion about Twitter.
  
• Web browser Firefox has been downloaded nearly a billion times. Firefox 3.0 was recently released.
  
• Microsoft and Yahoo finally tied the knot on a ten-year deal. The arrangement will see Microsoft power Yahoo search.
  

Meet the team: Richard Frost

Friday, July 31, 2009 by Richard Frost

Richard Frost is the latest member of theEword team, joining as the newest addition to the company's SEO copywriting department. Richard has a track record of providing content for a number of Manchester SEO companies and he brings with him four years of web-writing experience. Here, Richard talks to theEword blog about his career, SEO writing and Google algorithms.

What do you see as being the most interesting part of your new position

Writing for the web is so much different to writing for magazines and newspapers. I enjoy learning about all the different SEO techniques that can boost online visibility, from keywords to hyperlinks, and incorporating them into my copy in a readable way.

How do you write copy which appeals to an audience?

You can use all the SEO techniques in the world, but don’t forget that at some point real people are going to read your copy. We’ve all clicked onto websites that do well in search engine results pages, only to make a hasty retreat upon finding the content is practically unreadable. My job is to stop that from happening by writing copy that engages people as well as search engines.

How is your meta data?

Wasn’t he in Star Trek?

Seriously.

It's excellent. And under 250 characters. Thank you for asking.

What is your favourite word?

Contrafibularities. I also drop phrasmotic, interphrastically and pericombobulation into conversation at least twice a day.

What’s your favourite piece of electronic equipment?

My Sky Box has opened worlds upon worlds of entertainment. Finally, I’ve found something that satisfies my craving for a daily fix of gourmet cheese festivals, televangelists and Red Dwarf marathons.

What has been your favourite marketing campaign?

I greatly admire the subtlety of the product placement in the Transformers' films. The rebranded vehicles, the lingering shots of car badges, the GM-friendly script edits etc. etc.

What would you do with £1 million?

I would buy a small banana republic in Latin America, install myself as supreme overlord and make Google algorithms a compulsory part of the curriculum.

theEweekly Wrap

Friday, July 24, 2009 by Tom Mason

Google plans moon mission

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landings, Google launched its latest addition to its map service - Google Moon. The application allows users to reach for the stars and explore the surface of the orbiting rock. Google has integrated a number of features into this voyage of exploration – YouTube videos, 3D renders of scuttled spacecraft and a guided tour following the path of the Apollo 11 mission (voiced by the second man on the moon, Buzz Aldrin).

Flu season

The National Pandemic Flu Service, a government website designed to diagnose cases of Swine Flu in England crashed minutes after its launch on Thursday. The website, which dispenses advice and anti-viral prescriptions, was taken down four minutes after its launch as 2,6000 users tried to access it every second. The site was designed to cope with up to 1,200 hits a second.

Profiting from SEO

A number of SEO and technology companies revealed their quarterly revenue this week. The results were mixed. Microsoft stunned the industry after posting a 29 per cent decline in profits for the last three months, while Yahoo, long-rumoured to be the subject of a Microsoft takeover, revealed a 12-month profit lost of 25 per cent. Meanwhile, Google posted a net profit growth of 18 per cent. Eric Schmidt, chief executive of Google, said that the company remained “focused on investing in technical innovation to drive growth.”

Building society withdraws from Phorm

The Nationwide Building Society has opted out of the targeted-advertising application Phorm. A statement from Nationwide said the move was designed to protect the privacy of its customers.

Phorm is a controversial system which provides targeted advertising based on a user’s internet history.

A statement from Nationwide said:

“We have had discussions with our online advertising agency on Phorm and as a result of this review we have decided to contact Phorm and ask them not to scan the Nationwide website. Investigating the service that they are looking to offer, we do not see the benefit to our customers or to us of allowing them to scan the Nationwide website in this way.”

Nationwide Building Society is the latest company to decline the Phrom service. Most recently, communications providers BT and Talk Talk have refused to use the programme, the former after having initially been involved in Phorm testing.

So long and thanks for all the spam

Social networking site Twitter declared war on spammers this week. The company has begun to delete accounts infamous for spam and has suspended those it suspects of being users. Previously, Twitter had been criticised for not acting against the amount of spammers operating on the service.

theEword Academy: the basics behind online marketing

Thursday, July 23, 2009 by Holly Oboyle

theEword online marketing assistant Holly O' Boyle explains the basics behind pay-per-click campaigns

As an online marketer at theEword, it is my responsibility to generate and monitor a number of online advertising campaigns for a variety of different clients.

Know your keywords

Every online marketing campaign requires a keyword focus. It is vital that time is set aside for comprehensive research to determine the search terms which will produce a good ROI for a client. There are many different tools you can use to focus online marketing campaigns: Google AdWords and Google Insights being just two.

Time

Online marketing isn’t just about finding the right keywords. You need to be able to pinpoint the times these searches are being made. You want to maximise the number of users exposed to the advertisement. Run the campaign during a period when many users are searching for the term. This guarantees an advertisement maximum exposure.

Budget

Online marketing also needs to take a client’s budget into consideration. While a client may want to advertise on a competitive (read: expensive) term, it may be more profitable to run their pay-per-click campaigns on a series of cheaper, long-tail keywords. Indeed, it is very possible that a focused long-tail query is more likely to convert than a generic one.

Geo targeting

A client on a smaller budget may also want to consider geo targeting – bidding on general terms in a specific region. Terms which include a location, such as ‘restaurant Manchester’, are considerably less expensive than a cost-per-click campaign focusing on a generic keyword, like ‘restaurant’.

Understanding the audience

It is our mission as online marketing employees to produce an ROI for clients. This means we have to understand our audience. It is a cliché, but we have to keep ourselves in our customer’s shoes. Yes, we can use Google’s trends and tools, but there’s more to online marketing than monitoring search patterns.

Innovation

Innovation is a necessity. It is our responsibility to attract the appropriate user and this means we have to establish new methods to draw in paying customers. We need to look at user behaviour and establish how we can produce results, increase conversions and, ultimately, grow a client’s business within their budget.

theEword fundraising programme gets off to a successful start

Tuesday, July 21, 2009 by Dan Nolan

You may remember back in April we told you about theEword fundraising programme and its inaugural event, at which creative director Tom Glass and online marketing manager Mark Baker planned to take part in a sponsored dive in the shark tank at Blue Planet Aquarium in aid of charity.

Now, having counted all the donations (and our scuba-happy colleagues' limbs, fingers and toes) we are delighted to declare the event, which took place earlier this month, a resounding success.

In completing the dive, Tom and Mark managed to raise more than £300 in sponsorship donations, all of which will be given to the CLIC Sargent cancer charity. The organisation provides care and support for children and young people who are suffering from the illness.

"It’s great that we were able to raise so much money for CLIC Sargent," said creative director Tom Glass. "It’s a charity that’s very close to my heart, so I really wanted the shark dive to be a success. Thanks to everyone who donated and sent us messages of support."

Of the dive itself, marketing manager Mark Baker said:

"I was quite nervous beforehand. They explain everything to you but it suddenly becomes very real when you see the sharks in the tank. I had to take a few moments to compose myself before taking the plunge.

"The staff at the aquarium are fantastic, as is everyone who donated money."

Attention now turns to the next event in theEword fundraising programme, which will take place later in the summer. Details are currently being finalised, but we can tell you it will involve an aeroplane, some parachutes and several terrified team members. All in a good cause, of course.

More pictures from the shark dive:

Tatler most invited list - is the Guardian linkbaiting?

Monday, July 20, 2009 by Dan Nolan

Here's a lesson in SEO linkbaiting from the Guardian, whose popular fashion and consumer culture journalist Tanya Gold shows an impressive grasp of the basic power of keywords, encompassing keyword density and search-friendly URLs.

Writing on the subject of the Tatler most invited list, Gold manages to cram her article with repeated references to the Tatler most invited list, as typified by this passage:

“I don't trust the methodology of the Tatler most invited list. If I were compiling the Tatler most invited list, I would take Elton John and David Furnish hostage, and make them show me their invitations."

The emboldening is ours. What is notable about the piece is that it manages to drop repeated references to the keyword phrase while at the same time making the process seem entirely natural: not once would the average reader, apart from perhaps during the section above, sense that the text was keyworded.

Blending keywords into copy in this manner is great SEO practice, and a technique that good SEO copywriting companies such as theEword employ in their work. Keywords are vital in proving a site’s relevance to Google, but more important is that their use is presented in as natural a way as possible, so as not to detract from the user experience. Readers are, after all, our primary concern.

So Gold’s piece is Good for Google, but what makes it linkbaiting? Apart from the use of keywords, look at the URL: /tatler-most-invited-list, it reads, in all its easily searchable glory. The subject matter, too, while not one that sets our own pulses racing, is one that could conceivably attract clicks.

If someone were to type ‘Tatler most invited list’ into Google, a la the image below

the Guardian article, with its keyword copy and search-friendly URL, would be perfectly placed for the search engines to find. (Indeed, try it for yourself and see what happens.)

It’s not hard to follow the logic by which the Guardian arrives at topics for its linkbaiting news and blog posts: choose a subject that it believes people will search for on the internet, find a writer to do discuss it, then tailor the content – paying particular attention to keyword density, anchor text and a search-friendly URL – to give the resultant article maximum visibility to search engines.

The benefits are two-fold. Search users get to find the information they want more easily, while the Guardian gets more traffic to its site. When you put these two things in a commercial context, say, with someone who wants to buy a table being directed to a furniture website, the results could be hugely profitable.

For more information on linkbaiting, keyword density and SEO copywriting, see theEword website.

Search market share: Bing's set to change?

Monday, July 20, 2009 by Dan Nolan

So, like War and Peace or a particularly tortuous episode of Eastenders, the Microsoft and Yahoo search share saga continues to drag on. The latest rumour to grace the ever-grinding mill is that Microsoft is - finally - ‘close’ to putting in an offer for its rival's search arm, after the software firm failed to land a $33 per share deal more than 12 months ago.

(Presumably, the Windows giant is 'closer' to making the buyout than it was last November, when it expressed a distinct lack of interest in former Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang's infamous "the best thing for Microsoft to do is buy Yahoo" plea at the Web 2.0 conference.)

The latest observer to add flames to the takeover fire is William Morrison, a financial analyst with ThinkEquity, who says he believes a deal between the two parties to be ‘imminent’.

With Microsoft’s revamped Bing search engine apparently performing well, the acquisition of what some see to be an ailing search concern, in the form of Yahoo, might seem a surprising move for the former Live Search company to make, but any hostile action from Gates and co. would signal aggressive intent as they look to make up ground on search market leaders Google.

And with several analysts predicting that Bing’s search share could drop once its $100million marketing budget runs dry, a well-timed swoop for Yahoo could be just what Microsoft needs to reinforce its position and maintain momentum in the industry (the proposed details of the new deal, which is said to be valued at almost £2billion, would see Microsoft solidify market share at over 30 per cent).

Whether any agreement will be reached remains to be seen. This will-they-won’t-they search story has been rolling on for 18 months now with no sign of a conclusion. Certainly, Yahoo may be tempted to sign away search should they post less-than-impressive financial results next week.

As to whether there will be an imminent change in either company's search market share, we’ll have to wait and see.

theEweekly Wrap

Friday, July 17, 2009 by Tom Mason

Stephen Fry, the award-winning British comic, has revealed he occasionally downloads files illegally. Speaking at the iTunes Festival in London this week, Fry said he sometimes watches illegal copies of television shows online.

The comic commented that he has downloaded episodes of American medical drama House – starring his long-term collaboration partner Hugh Laurie – and action series 24. Fry then went on to say he always downloaded these episodes legally when they became available.

His comments came during a keynote speech about the future of the entertainment industry on the internet. When asked about the prosecution of users caught downloading material illegally, Fry said:

“Making an example of ordinary people is the stupidest thing the record industry can do.”

The actor, and host of hit BBC 2 quiz show Qi, later said that he supported the prosecution of users who downloaded material on an ‘industrial scale’, but that he did not necessarily mind if people watched his own work without paying.

“I'm against cynical bootlegging but I work in a very molly coddled, overpaid business, ” he said.

Breaking (the bank) News

The editor of the Financial Times, Lionel Barber, has said that most news organisations will begin charging users for viewing their online content within the next 12 months. Speaking at the Media Standards Trust event on Thursday 16 June, Barber confidently stated that print media would start charging readers to access articles online.

"I confidently predict that within the next 12 months, almost all news organisations will be charging for content.

"How these online payment models work and how much revenue they can generate is still up in the air," he added.

The Financial Times allows users to view a limited selection of articles before asking for a subscription fee.

"We are seeing sustained and growing revenue as a result of our strategy of premium pricing for quality, niche global content – crucial at a time of weakening advertising," Barber added.

His comments come a month after Rupert Murdoch, head of global media group News Corporation, said that he expected the company's published titles to begin charging for online content in the near future. News Corporation owns the British newspapers The Times, the Sunday Times and the Sun.

Legal Tweeters

The social networking site Twitter is considering legal action after a website published a series of confidential documents stolen from the firm. TechCrunch, an American technology blog posted several confidential documents which had been stolen by a French hacker.

The published files included details of business plans, financial projections and the building layout of the Twitter HQ in San Francisco.

"We are in touch with our legal counsel about what this theft means for Twitter, the hacker, and anyone who accepts and subsequently shares or publishes these stolen documents," said Biz Stone, the co-founder of Twitter.

News in 140 characters:

Microsoft is said to be close to buying rival Yahoo. Reports suggest the deal would cost Microsoft around $3 billion (£1.8 billion).

Google have posted a $1.48 billion profit for the previous three months. Net profit grew by 18 per cent from last August.

A US file-sharer who leaked the latest Guns N’ Roses LP online before its release in 2008 has been sentenced to two months of home confinement.

theEword Academy: Designing a great website

Monday, July 13, 2009 by Stephen Dixon

Stephen Dixon, web designer at theEword, tells us how he goes about creating a perfect website

Creating a website requires experience and technical expertise. A design has to satisfy a client and attract a user and much like my copywriting colleagues, it is my responsibility to produce a product which serves two masters. There are a number of factors to consider when creating a website. Here are just four.

Stick to the brief

I rely on the brief to form the foundation of a design; it is the structure which I build a website around. As any good designer will tell you, a brief sparks the imagination. You create a vivid picture of how a website will look based on the desires of a client.

Have the experience

Having worked in web design for seven years, I am able to utilise my experience to create functional and stylish websites. As a designer, you learn what works and what does not. You can draw on previous briefs and commissions to create attractive and practical websites.

Experience is key in web design. This allows me to incorporate designs and ideas from similar projects; each brief is an opportunity for designers to develop a theme or motif into something more.

Be aware of current trends

It is important to stay ahead of current creative trends. Websites need to be fresh, engaging and innovative. Only by keeping abreast of the latest techniques can you hope to keep producing appealing designs – for both the user and the client.

Know your audience

Working for a full-service digital agency like theEword gives me the opportunity to understand the user. As a designer, it is vital I know as much about the audience as possible. Working with Mark Baker (Online marketing manager at theEword), I am able to understand exactly who I am designing for. This allows me to alter my designs in order to directly appeal to the intended individual.

theEweekly Wrap

Sunday, July 12, 2009 by Tom Mason

Chrome Collaboration

A number of laptop developers have agreed to produce netbooks which use the new Google Chrome operating system.

Acer, Asus, Freescale, HP, Lenovo and Toshiba are among companies that have signed up to design and build laptops capable of using the OS from the search engine.

A statement of the Google blog has also confirmed the search company are working closely with Adobe on the production of the system. Adobe are responsible for the popular online tool Flash.

Jackson memorial boosts web traffic

The memorial of pop singer Michael Jackson drew a 19 per cent rise in global web traffic. The televised tribute concert was streamed live on a number of different websites, including the BBC, CNN and Fox News. A statement from the BBC said the live coverage of the event was accessed over 410,000 times in the United Kingdom.

American news channel CNN partnered with social media site Facebook to cover the memorial. The collaboration gave users the opportunity to watch the live coverage while simultaneously updating their personal status. It is reported that the memorial service inspired over 6,000 status updates per minute.

Page-turner: US Department of Justice to investigate Google book deal

The Department Of Justice in the United States is to conduct an investigation into the proposed deal between Google and the US publishing industry.

The US Department of Justice has confirmed it is conducting a formal investigation to ascertain whether or not the arrangement could be considered anti-competitive. Millions of book titles would be digitised and available for search, purchase and download from Google if the scheme goes ahead.

Authors’ Guild Director Paul Aiken declared the project “the biggest book deal in US publishing history,” while Sergey Brin of Google called it a “great leap.”

Brin, co-founder of the search giant, expressed every confidence that the deal would go ahead.

Popularity contest

The social networking site Twitter has banned a social marketing campaign from appearing in the top ten ‘Trending Topics’.

The web design agency Moonfruit offered Twitter users the chance to win one of 10 MacBook Pros if they used a #Moonfruit tag in their updates. The campaign quickly made its way to the top of Twitter’s trend topic list after word of the competition spread through Twitter community.

The #Moonfruit tag has since been removed from Twitter’s trend topics list. Wendy Tan, marketing director of Moonfruit, said the campaign had been removed without notice.

She commented:

“If Twitter had come to us and said enough is enough, then we would have worked with it to limit the campaign, or complied with whatever it was demanding. However, they've pulled the trending without explanation or communication, which sets rather a different tone.”

Growth still good as theEword announces latest contract win

Monday, July 06, 2009 by Dan Nolan

From the very beginning, when we launched theEword with the mantra 'Growth Is Good', we have been a company that is dedicated to growing. Indeed, we are an agency that specialises in helping our clients to grow business, nurture their web presence and realise their full potential.

This commitment to growth doesn't end with our clients, though. Over the past 12 months, we've grown too, at a tremendous rate. Pivotal contract wins and staff expansion mean we're a burgeoning force in the SEO Manchester scene, something which hasn't gone unnoticed by the local press.

Our growth shows no sign of stopping, either, as we continue to pick up new contracts from around the region. The latest of these is a brief to develop a microsite and handle PPC marketing for Bolton-based property firm Miller Metcalfe.

We'll be working closely with the company - which is recognised as one of the most respected independent property companies in the North West - to digitally market their services, which include residential sales, lettings, conveyancing, mortgages, surveys and valuations.

Speaking about the latest contract win, theEword managing director Al Mackin said:

"We are delighted to have added yet another client to our ever-expanding list. theEword is a growing company and contracts such as this one prove that we are as dedicated to our own growth as we are to our clients'."

To learn more about the full range of SEO and online marketing services offered by theEword, please get in touch.

theEweekly Wrap

Friday, July 03, 2009 by Tom Mason

Bing it on

A third of search users prefer Bing - Microsoft's latest attempt at launching a successful search engine - to Google, according to research from the Catalyst Group.

The study, which saw 12 users compare the two websites, found that a third of participants favoured Microsoft's search engine. The research looked at various factors, including design, relevancy of results and filtering options.

The remaining participants said that they preferred Google’s search engine based on its usability and familiarity with the site.

Nick Gould, CEO of Catalyst, said the results were promising for Microsoft, although he added that the majority of participants were ‘not swayed’ by Bing.

Hunch about success

The co-founder of the latest search engine, Hunch, has revealed that he is relatively pleased with the site’s progress. Chris Dixon said the site was ‘going pretty well,’ but admitted that there was still some improvements to be made.

Two weeks ago, theEword reported on the launch of Hunch, a new search engine designed to answer users’ questions based on their previous searches. The site can answer questions such as ‘what do I want for dinner’ or ‘should I move in with my partner’, by collating personal data which users have previously enter into the system.

Dixon revealed that there were 63,000 user-submitted search results on the system at present. Over 20 million ‘Teach Hunch About Yourself’ questions had been answered by searchers.


Converting clips

Media-sharing site YouTube is allowing advertisers to display ‘call to action’ banners on video clips. The new scheme sees advertisers place a text promotion banner near the bottom of their own YouTube videos.

Advertisers will be hoping that the new scheme leads to a growth in conversions. Every banner will link through to the intended website and YouTube has promised that all clicks on this overlay will be tracked in its analytics programme, YouTube Insight.


Tweeting the truth

Evan Weaver, Twitter’s lead engineer, revealed some of the secrets behind the phenomenal success of the social networking site this week. Speaking at the QCon 2009, Weaver disclosed various titbits of information about Twitter and its users. He revealed the average user has 126 followers and that over 80 per cent of the site’s traffic comes from third-party software such as the Twitterific iPhone application.

theEword Academy: Trending Topics on Twitter

Wednesday, July 01, 2009 by Tom Mason

In theEword Academy, the SEO Manchester company offer a guide to the internet's most talked about topics.

Twitter has established itself as one of the leading social networking communities. A large part of its popularity comes from the ability of users to quickly share news and opinion among friends (followers).

Trending Topics are a crucial facet in this rapid proliferation of information. Featured at the right-hand side of the Twitter homepage, these are a collection of the ten most frequently used words or phrases by the majority of users at any one time.

Twitter creates this list by analysing the frequency of keywords in each message (called ‘tweets’) posted on the site. If a certain keyword is used by a proportion of different members in a set period of time, it is included on the Trending Topics list.

This list allows users to quickly discover, and contribute to, the most popular conversations taking place on Twitter at any one moment. Sometimes, users place a hash tag (#) in front of the keyword. This allows users to easily distinguish a topic.

Here is how the process works:

A single message (or tweet) is posted by user A. It includes a keyword or phrase (e.g. theEword),



Followers (user B and user C) of user A either repost this original tweet (called a re-tweet or RT) or individually respond to the topic being discussed. Users B and C both post the name, theEword.



Followers of user B and user C either repost the original tweet of user A or respond with their own thoughts. The same keyword (theEword) is used in the majority of these messages. As users B and C may have different followers, the topic is exposed to a large number of unique users.



This process continues until the topic gains a place on the Trending Topics tab. Depending on the circumstances – the popularity of other subjects and the time of day – it is estimated that around 2,000 tweets will result in a Trending Topic.



Some other things to take into consideration:

Trending Topics are not static – the list of the most common topics can frequently change during a 24 hour period. Topics can re-enter the trending list for a number of reasons. A news story may return to the Trending Topic list if a previously unrevealed detail comes to light and is discussed.

One subject can have many different trends. The recent death of pop star Michael Jackson featured on the Trending Topics page for a number of different terms, including ‘R.I.P Michael’, ‘MJ’,’ Michael Jackson’. The suspected manner of his death – ‘cardiac arrest’ – and location – ‘Los Angeles’ – also featured in the top ten Trending Topics.

Twitter has its fair share of memes – internet in-jokes shared between users of a specific community. These often feature in the Trending Topics. Some examples of recent Twitter memes include, #Music Monday (tweets about new bands users enjoy listening to) and #FollowFriday (encouraging users to post names of their friends others may like to follow).

Spam is a growing problem on Twitter. Spam comments occasionally make it onto the Trending Topics page. This is done when a user repeatedly tweets one specific keyword.