Twitter Trending Topics are a very cool thing and it is interesting to see how information spreads through Twitter.  An example that’s relevant today is the #IranElection.  But if you look at the current results (and since Twitter search is real time you may or may not see it) there are quite a number of ReTweets very often.

So It makes me think about how much is something really a “trend”.  So that means you need to define trend or at least define it for yourself or the twitterverse.  For me I’m more interested in seeing real content that is relevant to me.  So that means true conversations and discussion of a topic.  And a retweet as helpful and nice as they are, are not nessecarily real content when they reach a mass large enough to be a trend.  So I would like to see an option to the Trending Topic search that removes retweeting from the results.

Since retweets are not standard I’m sure it wouldn’t be perfect but I figure that by removing tweet results that start with “RT ” or “retweet ” or ones that have ” via @” near the tail of the tweet could constitute a retweet.  I’m sure there are a few others as odd apps like to come up with their stnadards (like “RT:”)  So another means either in conjunction or by itself is to remove tweets that are 95% similar to other tweets.  If you said the same thing as someone else then that data is not nessecarily as important in most cases.

Now I don’t propose that this option be a default unless it’s perfected but that like I’ve said that it is at least an option to help weed out the results to get decent content.  Since in the end the real reason to search is to find.