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Twitter has begun rolling out location-based trending topics.

The product is officially called Local Trends. In a statement to us, Twitter said the following:

“We’re rolling out local trends to 1 percent of users today, but we’ll share more information when it reaches a larger audience hopefully sometime next week. We’ll keep you posted when that happens.”

The pictures below, courtesy of @lisabarone, show the new feature in all of its glory. Scroll past them for more information on the new Twitter feature.

Screenshots: Local Trends

More Info

Currently, only a few users have access to the feature (I don’t have it yet), but it should be rolling out to everybody soon.

Here’s what we can tell you:

- Local Trends allows you to set a specific location, so that you can see the trends around you. Most of the time, this would be your home. However, it looks like you can change it on-the-fly if you’re traveling, for example.

- Clicking on Local Trends gives you a list of different cities and countries in which you can view trends. It’s a limited list so far — only 15 U.S. cities are supported.

- You can access these trending topics from Twitter.com, on the right-hand column.

- A full rollout should occur sometime next week, if testing goes smoothly.

We think this is a logical and smart move, especially in the wake of the rise of location-based service such as Foursquare. We’ll have more analysis soon.

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?

Social 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.

Starting this week, we will be publishing the top ten 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.

What Was Hot This Week

Here are some of our thoughts and observation on Twitter’s top ten trending topics for the week:

- 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.

- 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.

- 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.

- In the realm of entertainment, Justin Bieber, the Golden Globes, and Jersey Shore were the most talked about items of the weel.

Be sure to scroll down to the end of the post for the full list.

What Might Be Popular Next Week?

What 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.

Some of our predictions:

1. Apple’s announcement, including the Apple Tablet and the unveiling of iPhone 4.0.

2. The Grammy Awards, which air on 1/31, will garner a lot of discussion next week, along with some of its singers.

3. The plight in Haiti, as well as ways to help, will continue to dominate the discussion.

Top 10 Twitter Trending Topics, 1/16 to 1/22

All descriptions are provided courtesy of What The Trend.

Microsoft has decided to capitalize on the popularity of Windows Live Messenger in China, launching a new service called MSN Juku, which they call a “local innovation developed by MSN China.”

The service, however, is a lot like Twitter: It lets users connect with their other Live Messenger contacts and post 140-character messages. There’re a couple of important visual differences between this service and Twitter; old messages scroll to the right, for example, just like in another Twitter clone, Plurk. But it’s still a microblogging service, and one local media report actually called it a knock-off of Plurk, which is also quite popular in Asia.

Juku, which is currently in beta, brings several other innovations to the table; it lets users play games and win prizes, something that sounds like science fiction when it comes to the traditionally feature-shy Twitter. However, at this point, Microsoft hasn’t announced any plans to internationalize the service and perhaps position it as a direct competitor to Twitter.

Rewritten Article

Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin has just fabricated a abruptness actualization at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. He discussed Twitter, advertising, Bing, and answered admirers questions.

Here are some of the highlights:

On Tim Armstrong: Tim Armstrong acclimated to be one of Google’s top executives, but afresh became the CEO of AOL. They saw anniversary added backstage, and said that AOL was advantageous to accept anyone of his ability at the helm.

On Twitter: He was actual blessed for Evan Williams, Twitter Co-founder and CEO, who awash his aboriginal company, Blogger, to Google years ago. He was not alone complex in the Twitter seek deal.

Then he was asked by John Battelle whether or not he (Google) approved to access Twitter. He artlessly declared that “I did not try to buy Twitter,” but if a companies access them, they consider.

On online advertising: “The Internet as an commercial belvedere is actual efficient,” he said. He thinks Internet ante are traveling to go up, “a ascent tide.” He discussed the accommodation to actualize AdWords, allotment of their amount commercial system. A acceptable decision, if we say so ourselves.

On entering new areas: Google enters areas area they acquisition problems. Gmail, for example, they entered because solutions at that time were not scalable, did not about-face amid computers easily, etc. Android apparent the botheration of closed, proprietary adaptable operating systems.

On Bing: He declared that seek is a aggressive bazaar and business. He said he uses all seek engines (not surprising).

On the Yahoo/Microsoft Deal: He wouldn’t animadversion on whether the seek accord should go through, but did say that Yahoo has some innovations he hopes don’t just disappear.

On Chrome for Mac: Sergey is currently application Chrome for Mac. He’s been aghast with the timing of the beta of Chrome for Mac (he would accept rather had them barrage simultaneously), but is admiring with Chrome.

On Google Books: He discussed the altercation surrounding Google Books (there is a claiming by Microsoft, Amazon, and others to a adjustment Google had with authors and publishers), but artlessly declared that he anticipation Google Books provided a huge amount to association by attention and administration books with everyone.

The Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco has just started, but the conference has already brought some heavy hitters on stage, including Comcast CEO Brian Roberts and Paypal CEO Scott Thompson.

Just moments ago, Twitter Co-Founder and CEO Evan Williams took the stage with Federated Media CEO John Batelle to discuss revenue models, Facebook, potential acquisitions, and Twitter’s (potentially stagnating) growth.

Here are some of the highlights:

- On revenue models: They’ve done a lot of thinking about it, but they’re spending “approximately 97% of their efforts” on perfecting and growing the Twitter platform. Basically, he was coy about the company’s revenue strategy. John brought up the idea of “TweetSense” and “TweetWords” (a play on the popular Google AdSense and AdWords platforms), but Evan didn’t admit to anything.

However, he did say that they are optimistic on revenue, with so many brand advertisers and “theoretically monetizable information” available on the Twitter platform, the Twitter CEO isn’t worried about generating significant revenue in the near future.

- On Twitter’s growth: Evan admitted that Twitter’s U.S. traffic has stalled the last few months, but that some new features (such as Twitter Lists) should help solve this problem. He also pointed to international and mobile growth.

- On user retention: He stated that they have never been very good at finding that “killer application” for using Twitter for individuals, but that is now their focus. Twitter Lists is a big way to address this problem, Evan quickly added. They see it as a problem, but one that they can fix with some focus.

- On potential acquisition: Twitter is going for a long-term strategy rather than a “grow and be acquired” strategy. Part of it is that Twitter has potential, and part of it is that Evan Williams doesn’t feel the same pressure other entrepreneurs have to sell, since he’s already cashed out once before with the sale of Blogger to Google. He doesn’t believe Twitter’s interests align with being part of a bigger company.

- On Facebook: Evan discussed the increasing role of Facebook as a competitor to Twitter, but summed it up with this: “The world is big enough for Facebook and Twitter.”

- On Google Wave: He thinks Google Wave is awesome. He doesn’t know what Google Wave will become, though.

- On developers and revenue: Evan made it clear that developers can reliably invest in their platform. He believes developers are crucial to the Twitter experience.

- On international growth: The top five countries in terms of users: U.S., UK, Brazil, Japan, Indonesia (surprising!).

- On Twitter Lists and the suggested user list: “It’s time to retire the suggested user list.” He thinks they need to do something better and that it has indeed created a distortion in terms of influence.

Apple is a company that doesn’t often jump bandwagons; they rather have everyone else jump on theirs. It is thus somewhat understandable that they don’t have an official Twitter account yet, except for the one that lists all the new iTunes Trailers.

However, as noticed by Tweetdeck founder Iain Dodsworth, Apple has recently added a couple of iTunes-related Twitter feeds, bringing the total number of their accounts to five. These are:

twitter.com/iTunesMusic
twitter.com/iTunesPodcasts
twitter.com/iTunesTV
twitter.com/iTunesMovies

It’s not much, and we’d still like to see Steve Jobs tweet, but it’s a start.

Celebrities using Twitter is not a new phenomenon — it’s an increasingly common way for celebrities to promote new projects and connect with fans.

But how do celebrities use Twitter ? What’s the following/followers ratio? What is the sentiment for tweets involving celebrities? Brian Solis (FutureWorks) and PeopleBrowsr analyzed this information in his Twitter Celebrity Report for August 2009.

Some highlights:

She may have quit Twitter earlier this month, but actress/singer Miley Cyrus led celebrity Twitter mentions in August 2009, with an impressive 255,938 @mileycyrus mentions

Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) had the most followers in August with 3,778,464 — but The Ellen Show (@theellenshow) wasn’t far behind, with just under 3.5 million.

Gossip Blogger Perez Hilton led total celebrity tweets in August with 1,488.

Britney Spears (@britneyspears) follows the most users with 432,814.

Check out the full study and let us know your thoughts in the comments!

It’s been known for a number of months that Twitter inventor Jack Dorsey is working on a new startup codenamed “Squirrel”. Rumors swirled that it may be a mobile payments system, although the name of the venture and its specifics have remained under wraps. Today both the company’s name and technologies have been unveiled.

Dorsey’s new venture is called the Square iPhone Payment System, his new company is Self Edge NYC, and the service’s site will likely be located at SquareUp.com. The service provides a white dongle for your iPhone or iPod Touch that lets you pay without a credit card.

As CoolHunting wrote in July (without knowing about Dorsey’s involvement):

The innovation is in a small, plastic card reader that fits in to the headphone jack of an iPhone (or iPod Touch) and transfers the credit card’s swipe data to the app. After the employee enters the amount to charge, the customer confirms by scrawling their signature with their finger and then either one enters the customer’s email address to send the receipt to. The payment is processed by Square for a small percentage plus a fixed fee; the funds are transferred directly to the store’s bank account, cutting both time and complexity on the processing side. The customer’s receipt includes a map showing the location of the transaction which is handy for those who record, sort and file such things.

Credits:Mashable

If you’re waiting for the cutesy Palm Pre to come to the Verizon network, you’re in luck: VZWoffers, a Verizon Wireless Twitter account (although it’s unverified by Twitter) says the Pre will come to Verizon in 2010.

The tweet, first spotted by a reader of BoyGeniusReport, reads: “We will be carrying the Palm Pre smartphone early next year.”

Will you be getting the Pre on Verizon? Let us know in the comments!

If you’re a Wordpress.com user you probably already know about how the service automatically sends your posts to Ping-o-Matic! to help promote them for you.

Today the Publicize feature gets a major addition: the ability to send your posts to Twitter. You can go with the default tweet or customize the message, and override the automatic settings on a per post basis as well.

To enable the new feature, head over to your Dashboard: My Blogs admin page. In the Publicize column, check off the Twitter column for each of the blogs you’d like to enable to auto-tweet. You’ll be asked to authenticate each blog via OAuth, after which you’ll see a “Publicize” section at the bottom of the Publish box each time you write a new post.

To override any of the settings for an individual post, just click the Edit link in the Publicize section. You can edit the text of the tweet or turn it off altogether for that post. Note also that the connection settings are per blog and per user, so if you run a multi-author blog each individual writer will have to authenticate to their own Twitter account (or to whatever account is preferred).

If you’re a Wordpress.com user, will you be implementing the automatic Twitter posting?