Right now, it’s relatively easy to create a Twitter trending topic (see them at search.twitter.com). Example: start a game, get a couple of friends to join in, and if it catches on, you’ve got yourself a trend. Unfortunately, this also means that it’s easy to manipulate the trending topics for purposes of spam or even worse.
Currently, there’s a trending topic called #TwitterPornNames. It’s supposed to be a game to pass the time, but according to PC World, it’s
“nothing more then a disguise to get users to publicly post answers to their online security questions. The current game has a few variations you take the name of your first pet combine it with the street you grew up on or your mothers maiden name. All of these are common security questions to access your online accounts and bank information.”
Sounds like a miserable attempt at a scam, but the topic is popular, so maybe someone is buying into it. Don’t.
There is, however, another take on the origins of this topic. According to WhatTheTrend, it’s a
“…scam was started by PC World so they could write a story and get money from adsense payments when you clicked on the link“
Now, I sincerely doubt the latter is the case. But I’m pointing out both explanations to show how confusing trending topics can be; especially for the casual Twitter user. Without even going into who’s scamming who, the fact is that Twitter’s trending topics are currently easy to manipulate, and that Twitter needs to do something about it before they become too spammy/scammy to be used at all. If Twitter wants to be a real search engine, they need to start implementing real anti-spam measures; it’s not easy, but it’s necessary.
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