We’ve been monitoring US Twitter trends since shortly before the fourth #DemocraticDebate (October 15th.) With ~3 weeks of data on hand, we started looking for signs of inorganic amplification in early traffic for trending hashtags.
cc: @ZellaQuixote
cc: @ZellaQuixote
@ZellaQuixote This table shows the US trending hashtags with the highest percentage of automated tweets in traffic immediately prior to the hashtag in question trending. They are commercial/promotional rather than political. Hootsuite and Tweetdeck appear to be the tools of choice. 
@ZellaQuixote #TestimonialTuesday, the bottiest of the trending hashtags with 65.7% of early tweets posted via automation tools, is fairly representative. It’s mostly business accounts tweeting and replying to positive customer reviews.
@ZellaQuixote Although automation-driven trending hashtags pop up at all hours of the day, the activity isn’t evenly distributed; the trends tend to occur early in the morning in the US, peaking around 6 AM Pacific time.
@ZellaQuixote What about amplification via temporary retweets (tweetdecking/lobbing/etc)? We haven’t gone through all of the data yet, but did find 69 retweets of a Nov 4th #DWTS tweet posted at roughly the time the hashtag started trending that were later deleted.
