Skip to main content

Twitter will monitor tweets to find the biggest holiday trends

twitters new rules are here after womenboycotttwitter
bloomua / 123RF
Social media’s immediacy makes it possible to discover trending topics and news. Twitter is taking that one step further with a new insights platform catering specifically to the holiday season.  On Nov. 7, Twitter announced its first-ever holiday insights campaign. For users, the tool will help in find trending gifts, while businesses and marketers can find real-time insight into industry trends.

Twitter will be monitoring tweets and watching for top themes and trends using partnerships with Brandwatch and Cheddar. As tweets pop up, Twitter will both look for holiday trends in gifts and purchase patterns along with discussions on holiday recipes and other plans. Twitter says it’ll watch a number of different holiday-related topics, including the most mentioned hashtags and most-used emojis, along with hot gifts and the most-discussed brands.

Recommended Videos

That data will become bi-weekly news programs airing on @Cheddar via Twitter every Tuesday and Friday between 3 and 4 p.m. ET. Twitter says the program will help viewers stay on top of trends, so you can avoid buying that fidget spinner when the real trend is a Fingerling, Twitter suggests.

For businesses, that collection of real-time tweet data will help drive marketing campaigns using the most relevant trends. The new @TwitterMktg #HolidayisHappening chatbot will send real-time insights via Direct Message for businesses that sign up for the new tool. Twitter says the data will focus on tweets that show purchase-intent from the ingredients for that Thanksgiving recipe to the most tweeted Cyber Monday sales, rather than what Christmas shows to watch or what ugly sweater to wear to that party.

The company says last year brought 80 million holiday-related tweets between July 2016 and January 2017. By analyzing those Tweets using Brandwatch, Twitter will help monitor holiday trends for both consumers and businesses.

The Cheddar broadcasts launch on Nov. 9, while businesses can now sign up for the insights delivered via Direct Message by using the @TwitterMktg #HolidayisHappening chatbot.

Tweet trends already provide data for Popular Articles and trending hashtags for the Explore tab (and third-party companies monitor tweets for everything from marketing trends to what we’re eating). Twitter says this is their first campaign for holiday-related insights.

Hillary K. Grigonis
Hillary never planned on becoming a photographer—and then she was handed a camera at her first writing job and she's been…
More Twitter users will soon see fact-check notes on tweets
The Twitter app on the Sony XPeria 5 II.

Birdwatch, Twitter's community fact-checking pilot program, is expanding and getting a few updates. And for users in the U.S. that means more of them will be seeing a few tweets in their timelines that feature notes which add context to the tweets themselves.

On Wednesday, the official Twitter account for the bird app's Birdwatch program posted a series of tweets announcing its expansion.

Read more
Edited tweets may be coming to your Twitter timeline soon
Twitter app on the OnePlus 10T.

You may soon see edited tweets on your timeline because Twitter has begun testing its Edit Tweet feature.

On Thursday, Twitter offered up an update on its long-awaited tweet editing feature via a tweet and a blog post. Twitter published a blog post that details the nature of the test and what the current version of the Edit Tweet feature entails.

Read more
Twitter statuses can warn people when your tweet is a hot take
A Twitter icon on a blue background on a smartphone's screen, all on a white background.

Remember that AIM away message-like status feature Twitter was spotted working on a few months back? It looks a bit different now and is finally being tested with some Twitter users. Based on screenshots we've seen shared on Twitter, it looks less like AIM and more like Facebook's "How are you feeling?" statuses.

On Wednesday afternoon, TechCrunch reported that there were Twitter users "reporting that they can now post Twitter statuses, which lets them tag posts like they’re retro MySpace moods."

Read more