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"What did people buzz about the most this week?  Who was the singer that people tweeted the most about?  What issue caught the world's collective attention?\nSocial media is not only a great medium for conversation, but it's also an effective way to discover and analyze the popular topics of the day.  By aggregating and picking apart the millions of tweets, status updates and posts generated on the web every day, it's possible to figure out what people care about in real-time.\nStarting this week, we will be publishing the top 10 trending topics of the last seven days, based on the amount of time they trended on Twitter.  This data is provided to us courtesy of What The Trend, which tracks Twitter trends and provides user-generated descriptions of those topics.\nWhat Was Hot This Week\nHere are some of our thoughts and observation on Twitter's top ten trending topics for the week:\n\n- Unsurprisingly, the most-discussed topic of the week has been the crisis in Haiti.  After a 7.0 earthquake devastated Haiti, the world came to the people's aid, raising millions via text message and other social methods.\n- The Shorty Awards, which recognize great twitter users and their content, trended for nearly four days.  It's become more popular than even we predicted.\n- Both Martin Luther King Day and the Massachusetts special election between Scott Brown and Martha Coakley took up two trending topics.  Martin Luther King Day was on Monday, while the Massachusetts election occurred on Tuesday.\n- In the realm of entertainment, Justin Bieber, the Golden Globes and Jersey Shore were the most talked about items of the week.\n\nBe sure to scroll down to the end of the post for the full list.\nWhat Might Be Popular Next Week?\nWhat do you think will be the topics people discuss the most next week?  We have a few guesses, but we want to hear yours in the comments.\nSome of our predictions:\n\n1. Apple's announcement, including the Apple Tablet and the unveiling of iPhone 4.0.\n2. The Grammy Awards, which air on 1/31, will garner a lot of discussion next week, along with some of its singers.\n3. The plight in Haiti, as well as ways to help, will continue to dominate the discussion.\n\nTop 10 Twitter Trending Topics, 1/16 to 1/22\nAll descriptions are provided courtesy of What The Trend.\n\n\n\n       Rank\n    Topic\n    Time Trending\n    Change\n    Max Index\n    Description\n  \n       #1\n    Haiti\n    4 Days, 18 Hours\n    \n    1\n    On January 12, 2010 an earthquake measured at 7.3 devastated the country's capital, a week later on the 20th an aftershock of 6.1 struck, a telethon will be held on Jan 22, 2009 to raise funds for relief efforts.\n  \n       #2\n    Shorty Award\n    3 Days, 20 Hours\n    \n    2\n    The Second Annual Shorty Awards honor the most popular producers of short content on Twitter. Award winners are recognized in 26 official and 100s of user generated categories.\n  \n       #3\n    Justin Bieber\n    1 Day, 13 Hours\n    \n    3\n    Justin Bieber is a Canadian R&amp;B/pop singer has a lot of fans who like to tweet about him!\n  \n       #4\n    Follow Friday\n    17 Hours\n    \n    2\n    Follow Friday is a tradition where people tweet people they believe are fun/interesting to follow (on Fridays).\n  \n       #5\n    Scott Brown\n    1 Day, 3 Hours\n    NEW\n    1\n    Republican Scott Brown won the Massachusetts Senate race, beating Democrat Martha Coakley. \n  \n       #6\n    Massachusetts\n    1 Day, 2 Hours\n    NEW\n    1\n    Republican Scott Brown won a bitter Senate race in Massachusetts on Tuesday, dealing a stunning blow to President Barack Obama's legislative agenda and casting doubt on the fate of his sweeping healthcare overhaul.\n  \n       #7\n    MLK\n    16 Hours\n    NEW\n    2\n    Today is Dr. MLK Jr's actual birthday. He was a civil rights pioneer, Morehouse College Alum, &amp; member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.\n  \n       #8\n    Martin Luther King\n    17 Hours\n    NEW\n    2\n    On Jan. 18th, 2010 the U.S. is celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a national holiday in honour of the famous civil rights pioneer. President Barack Obama has given a special address to mark the occasion.\n  \n       #9\n    Jersey Shore\n    17 Hours\n    \n    1\n    Reality show on MTV about 8 Italian youths enjoying life and living it up on the Jersey Shore. Season finale is tonight at 10PM Eastern. Reruns are currently on.\n  \n       #10\n    Golden Globes\n    16 Hours\n    NEW\n    2\n    The 67th annual Golden Globe Awards was broadcast live on Sunday Jan. 17, on NBC. People are/were tweeting about the award winners and host, Rickey Gervais.\n  \n\n\n\n\nNote: Our data excludes hashtags unless they are relevant to a news story or major topic of world discussion."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2010/01/23/top-twitter-topics-jan-23/>