One feature of Happn.in we haven't mentioned previously is how we hide phrases that are trending in many cities.
Why? Because our mission at Happn.in is to capture local news and events. Global and National news is available other places (Twitter's own trends, for example), so we've made the decision to hide these trends on the main Happn.in pages, although they're still available in some of the labs sections.
Last night, as the 9:30 PM (EDT) round of Tweets was going out, we noticed that some of the top-10 lists were a bit short. This meant that so many cities were talking about the exact same topics that local news and events were being hidden. This was the first time we'd seen this behavior. It wasn't just a single phrase that was repeated everywhere (which happens often: susan boyle, swine flu, et al.), it was a large group of phrases that were identical across the world (mostly the US, to be fair).
And what was the event that brought the world together? The BET awards, with phrases like: new edition, keri hilson, jamie foxx, michael jackson, joe jackson, travis barker, red carpet, bobby brown, amber rose, and, appropriately, bet awards. You can see more phrases that were popular across many cities last night in the popular phrases section of the labs. The only other event that has come close to total Happn.in domination over the past two months was the E3 trade show on June 2nd, 2009.
In any case, what at first seemed like a problem made us realize, again, that this tool can show us the collective consciousness of the world, and it's just up to us to present it in meaningful ways.