Do you want to know what people are talking about in your city? Twitter's trending topics is a way to track what's going on in a specific location at any given moment. Now Twitter has decided to expand Trends to 70 more places, the company announced in a blog post.
Twitter first introduced trending topics in 2008 and has gradually expanded the feature since then. Last January, the feature was localized for a handful of places, but it was only available in major U.S. cities like New York City and Washington D.C. In November, Twitter expanded this to 6 more cities and 13 additional countries.
"Early last year, we added Local Trends to make it easier to find more locally relevant topics in specific countries and metropolitan locations," Twitter's Carolyn Penner wrote. "Today, we're adding Trends for more than 70 new cities and countries – bringing the total number of locations to more than 100."
To peruse the new locations, click the "change" link next to the city you've designated in the Trends section on the right-hand side of your browser. New countries include Brazil, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Malaysia, South Africa, and Japan, among others. Cities such as Monterrey, Mexico; Caracas, Venezuela; Jakarta, Indonesia; and Johannesburg, South Africa were also added to the list. But you don't have to get that specific. You can opt to view trending topics worldwide, by county, or by city.
Twitter, which was launched in 2006, now has more than 200 million registered users worldwide. Most of the site's growth was achieved over the past two years. In fact, a study from social media analytics company Sysomos says 95 percent of handles have been created since January 2009.