Twitter denies blocking #OccupyWallStreet from trending

When Justin Bieber stopped trending on Twitter, fans were up in arms. The #occupywallstreet hashtag has never trended and the protesters are starting to take notice, even loosely starting an #occupytwitter hashtag.

Much of the claims stem from investment; JP Morgan Chase, one of the targets of the protest, is an investor in Twitter.

“The bottom line is that trends on Twitter are NOT the most popular terms,” said Sean Garrett, head of communications at Twitter. “They are the most ‘breaking’ and reward discussions that are new to Twitter. We are not blocking terms related to #occupywallstreet in any way, shape or form.”

The formula for making a topic trend on Twitter is secret, but it’s assumed that mass and speed of hashtags and keywords are the biggest factors. If that’s true and the hashtags being used by the protesters are getting as much attention as it’s assumed, one may wonder why terms like “#GOLAKings” and “#Top10Lies” are currently trending in the United States while the various protestor hashtags are not.

It’s possible that they’re simply too diluted because of the different variations, according to BetaBeat. #occupywallstreet, #occupywallst, #ows, and other hashtags are used when Tweeting about the subject and they are not getting grouped together properly by the Twitter trending algorithm.

“We used to correlate terms for search benefit, but we don’t anymore,” Mr. Garrett said. “Regardless, we do not associate different (but possibly related) terms in the calculation of trends. This means that #ows or a new related term could ‘break’ on its own and be a trending topic if its usage hit a required peak.”