But Amritsar, Indore, Kanpur, Nagpur, Thane, Ranchi, Surat?
It’s hard to believe but these cities are now firmly entrenched on the Twitter map. They are among the 21 Indian cities whose residents tweet enough for Twitter to create a separate trending link for them.
The world’s largest microblogging site has recognised the tweeting skills of the residents of Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Bangalore, Bhopal, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Indore, Jaipur, Kanpur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, Nagpur, Patna, Pune, Rajkot, Ranchi, Srinagar, Surat, Thane.
These cities were put on the Twitter trending map in April 2013, making India the country with the highest number of trending locations outside the US. Tweets from these cities are no longer lost in the Twitter blizzard. Residents of these cities can select the Twitter trending location as their city, and browse all tweets emanating from their city. It is the best way to keep track of the city pulse.
Twitter explains that the Trends are “based on who you follow and your location”. Even more interesting is the fact that Twitter algorithm “identifies topics that are immediately popular, rather than topics that have been popular for a while or on a daily basis”.
So, now you can visit the Trends box, identify your country and select your city. The Twitter algorithm makes selection easier by showing only those cities that are closest to you on the trends map. Twitter will serve the topics that are trending topics in your city.
Twitter clearly has caught the fancy of Indians. There are no official figures available of the number of Indians who have a Twitter account, but rough estimates put the number at 6 per cent of Twitter’s 250 million members. In absolute terms, this is a hefty 15 million.
No wonder more and more Indian cities are jumping on the Twitter Map.