Hot topics extraction from Twitter

Question

I am building a website of finding and showing the hottest topics curretly on Twitter for my final project. Does anyone know how to extract the topics from the huge amount of tweets in the last week, or in a single day? I'm also wondering how to show the topics like a tag cloud on http://tweet3d.com/ and show the trend of each topic like http://trendistic.indextank.com/.

I really need your help since this final project dues at the end of this month. My partner asks me to use Flash Builder, I'm also learning to use that. Thanks guys.

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Additional Info(11/20/2011): after I do a search on Google, I come to this paper: comparing Twitter and traditional media using Topic Model,you may access it with this link: paper, but I cannot understand the model since I lack the related background.

Answer 1

I am not so familiar with the Twitter API, but maybe this could help: https://dev.twitter.com/docs/api/1/get/trends/current

Answer 2

I put together a nice JS fiddle that should answer all your questions when it comes to dealing with the Twitter API. The webapp grabs the trending locales, and allows you to drill down to the trending topics, and then see the Tweets within.

I also included a standard Twitter search submission box, so in a weird way, this is a barebones Tweetdeck client for you to examine. Also, to push the adaption of the new Jquery libraries, I have used 1.91 which utilities the new live.bind click event syntax.

Enjoy

http://jsfiddle.net/jdrefahl/5M3Gn/

function searchTwitter(query) {
$.ajax({
    url: 'http://search.twitter.com/search.json?' + jQuery.param(query),
    dataType: 'jsonp',
    success: function (data) {
        var tweets = $('#tweets');
        tweets.html('');
        for (res in data['results']) {
            tweets.append('<div>' + data['results'][res]['from_user'] + ' wrote: <p>' + data['results'][res]['text'] + '</p></div><br />');
        }
    }
});
}

$(document).ready(function () {

function getTrendsByID(id) {
    $.ajax({
        url: 'http://api.twitter.com/1/trends/' + id + '.json',
        dataType: 'jsonp',
        success: function (data) {
            $.each(data[0].trends, function (i) {
            });
        }
    });
};

function getLocales() {
    $.ajax({
        url: 'https://api.twitter.com/1/trends/available.json',
        dataType: 'jsonp',
        success: function (data) {
            var locales = $('ul#locales');
            locales.html('');
            $.each(data, function (i) {
                localeID[i] = data[i].woeid;
                $('ul#locales').append('<li>' + data[i].name + '</li>');
            });
        }
    });

};

function getTrends(id) {
    $.ajax({
        url: 'https://api.twitter.com/1/trends/' + id + '.json',
        dataType: 'jsonp',
        success: function (data) {
            var trends = $('ul#currentTrends');
            trends.html('');
            $.each(data[0].trends, function (i) {
                $('ul#currentTrends').append('<li>' + data[0].trends[i].name + '</li>');
            });
        }
    });
};

// Event Handlers
$(document).on("click", "#locales li", function () {
    var $this = $(this);
    var localesHdr = $('#currentTrendsCont h3');
    var tweets = $('#tweets');
    var trendsHdr = $('#tweetsCont h3');
    trendsHdr.html('');
    tweets.html('');
    localesHdr.html('');
    $('#currentTrendsCont h3').html($this.text());
    getTrends(localeID[$this.index()]);
});

$(document).on("click", "#currentTrends li", function () {
    var $this = $(this);
    var trendsHdr = $('#tweetsCont h3');
    trendsHdr.html('');
    $('#tweetsCont h3').html($this.text());
    var params = {
        q: $this.text(),
        rpp: 10
    };
    searchTwitter(params);
});

$('#submit').click(function () {
    var trendsHdr = $('#tweetsCont h3');
    var trends = $('#currentTrends');
    var local = $('#currentTrendsCont h3');
    local.html('');
    trendsHdr.html('');
    trends.html('');
    $('#tweetsCont h3').html('search query: '+$('#query').val());
    var params = {
        q: $('#query').val(),
        rpp: 10
    };
    searchTwitter(params);
});

// Globals
var localeID = new Array();

// Init!
getLocales();

});