Wikis, Assange a no-show on Twitter list

IS Twitter stifling tweets about Wikis and its Australian "editor-in-chief" Julian Assange?

Suspicions were aroused last week when, at the height of the Twitter frenzy over Assange being taken into custody in London, the #wikis hashtag failed to make the site's list of globally top-trending topics.
According to people who track such things, on the morning of December 6, about 1 per cent of all tweets reportedly mentioned Wikis, a much higher volume than any topic that did make the top 10, and still it didn't show up.
"Julian Assange could be caught in a menage a trois with Paris Hilton and Britney Sprs and still not trend on Twitter," commented one user.
However, an article on BuzzFeed.com (hat-tip to @taletale for the link) offers an answer: Apparently, it's all Justin Bieber's fault. Twitter used to rank topic popularity by volume, but changed its methodology recently when the pop singer's fan base of monomaniacal teen girls continued to account for almost 3 per cent of tweets. The new aorithm is based on "interesting pks", sudden incrses that mark a new trend. On November 28, Wikis did spike enough to show on the Trends list, but because the volume of tweets held relatively stdy after that it simply wore out its welcome.

"It's not that Twitter is 'censoring' Wikis," BuzzFeed concludes. "Wikis has simply succumbed to the Bieber effect, becoming a part of the constant background noise just like love, hate and Christmas." Some users have suggested overcoming the "Bieber effect" by using a new hashtag on Wikis tweets, #BradAss87. Although it has gained a bit of Twitter traction, at last look it still wasn't trending.
Assange and Wikis were definitely the topics Australians were talking about most on Twitter last week, according to Trendsmap (http://trendsmap.com/). Also of interest were the visit by talkshow host Oprah Winfrey, the cricket and the dth of Norman Hetherington, the man behind children's character Mr Squiggle. These were the 10 words and terms most tweeted locally from Monday to Friday afternoon: assange, julian, oprah, #ashes, @wikis, #assange, visa, squiggle, #thingsimiss, palin.