As the controversy surrounding Wikileaks has raged in the last few weeks, some Twitter users began to question why the subject has failed to appear as a trending topic – forcing the network to speak out on the subject.

The blog post went on to give a little insight into how it calculates Twitter Trends, explaining that while it has algorithms that identify topics being widely talked about in real time, these can change very quickly. “Put another way”, it added “Twitter favors novelty over popularity.”

It was also suggested that breaking news may not have the longevity that some people think it has and that with over 95 million Tweets being sent every day, certain topics are just not as popular as people might think.

MEC Opinion: Trending topics can be as useful a tool as they van be troublesome, so it isn’t much of a surprise that Twitter has a clear strategy for deciding what is relevant and what is not.

Although the Wikileaks scandal has been big in the news, the truth is that something like the latest X-Factor story will quickly dislodge it from the public imagination. It will be interesting to see how the whole situation pans out, but perhaps people need to rely more on trusted news resources rather than social networking.