News, Updates, and Commentary for Happn.in.

The word Moon has appeared on Happn.in over 1200 times (meaning it’s been a part of nearly 1200 trends). This is a lot of trends. What’s interesting to me, however, is how the same word – moon – can show up in wildly different trends

Take two of the biggest news stories from the past month:

1. Michael Jackson’s Death
2. The 40th anniversary of Apollo 11

Different stories obviously, but both stories showed up on Happn.in through the word ‘moon’. In the case of MJ: moon walk and in the case of Apollo 11: moon landing

What’s odd is how infrequently the word ‘moon’ actually shows up in a trend just about the moon itself. It really only shows up when people say full moon

Otherwise you get references to beer (blue moon), to music (sun kil moon), or to the greatest t-shirt of all time (three wolf moon).

By far the most popular trend in which the word ‘moon’ shows up has to do with the sequel to that movie Twilight. It’s called New Moon. It’s been a trend in some form or another over 700 times. WHICH IS TO SAY: over 50% of the time the word ‘moon’ has been used.

The complete list of different trends in which the word ‘moon’ has appeared.

• ban ki-moon
• blue moon
• blue over moon
• button moon
• dragon moon festival
• moon landing
• full moon
• funny moon
• half moon
• half moon bay
• happy moon
• moon pie
• jamario moon
• killing moon
• lullaby moon
• moon available
• moon over
• moon looks
• moon river
• moon rock
• moon tonight
• moon trailer
• moonwalk
• new moon
• sailor moon
• saw moon
• see moon
• seeing moon
• sun kil moon
• wolf moon

All of these findings were made using the Happn.in Labs

Some preamble before I get to the main point

Happn.in collects local Twitter trends (as you hopefully know if you are reading this blog). While conceptually this is straightforward, in practice there are a number of interesting problems, not least of which is the spam problem. Twitter, like the rest of the internet, is covered in non-nutritious spam. We have a number of methods to rid the Happn.in updates of spam. Most effectively, we have human editors who review the local trend lists and identify spam-like tweets and users. Once they identify spam, Happn.in knows phrases and users that are likely spam and our trend lists get better and better—with one glaring caveat. The people behind Happn.in only speak English.

The Main Point

We have started to add more and more non-english speaking cities to Happn.in. At first, because of the spam problem, we only included english tweets in the local trend lists. We realized that this was a pretty poor representation of a lot of non-U.S. locales, so recently we decided to include any and all languages in which people are tweeting. We are excited to do this; this is a good thing.

BUT: at the moment, those cities tweeting in languages other than English are going to experience more spam. We apologize for this; and are working to fix it. We are actively recruiting non-English speaking volunteers to join our editorial team; and help us rid our local trend lists of the evil spam that wants to take over everything. If you are interested in volunteering, please contact us. We would be extremely appreciative; and are coming up with ways to make it worth your while (ways including but not limited to T-shirts AND MAYBE STICKERS).

BUT MOSTLY: we are excited to bring Happn.in to more of the world – and for more of the world to bring their conversation and community to Happn.in.

AND A SIDENOTE: If any software developers are interested in a listing of non-human Twitter accounts, we’d be happy to send you ours.

To celebrate and announce the upcoming Happn.in iPhone application, we are giving away an iPod Touch on July 10. Here’s the deal:

To enter, just @-reply Happn.in within Twitter – that’s @happn_in (note the underscore). We will randomly choose one winner on July 10 at 5 PM Eastern Time.

TO INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING (three-fold): be sure you are a follower of one of the Happn.in cities on Twitter – check the list to find the city nearest you.

Happn.in makes Twitter more useful (see this recent blog post for why we think Twitter is mostly not useful right now) – we collect local data so you can see what people are Twittering about around you. Currently, we have over 130,000 people following 67 Happn.in cities worldwide. With our upcoming iPhone application, we’re going give our users even more ways to engage with their local community through Twitter.

Starting Sunday July 5, you can throw your name in the hat for our 8 GB iPod Touch Giveaway, and on Friday, July 10 at 5 PM Eastern, we’ll choose one of you at random.

Contest Rules

1. Contest runs from July 5 through July 10.
2. You enter by replying to @happn_in from your Twitter Account (doesn’t matter what you say, but if you use profane or offensive language, we’ll disqualify you and think lowly of you).
3. If, on July 10th, you are a follower of one of the 67 Happn.in Cities, you will be three times as likely to win the contest (think of it like this: anyone can get a raffle ticket, but Happn.in followers get THREE raffle tickets). You can see the full list (with links to their Twitter accounts) at Happn.in. You can follow more than one city, of course, but this won’t increase your chances.
4. A winner will be chosen at random on Friday, July 10 at 5 PM Eastern; and will be announced via the official Happn.in Twitter User (@happn_in)
5. The winner must provide us with a legit mailing address within 7 days of the announcement. We will attempt to contact the winner through Twitter Direct Message (though, that person must follow @happn_in for us to be able to do that). The 8 GB iPod Touch will be sent out within 7 days after receiving the mailing address.
6. We reserve the right to change or update these rules as necessary.

OK SO: Good luck. Any questions, definitely let us know either through Twitter or our Feedback Page. We will update this blog post with any Frequently Asked Questions or Rule Updates as the contest continues.

Update (June 10, 2009)

OUR WINNER IS: @paulgerhardt. Yeay! Congratulations to Paul; and everyone else: THANK YOU! It was a really fun week. We were excited by all the response and feedback.

You’ve been able to advertise on Happn.in since the beginning, but today we introduce two developments that make advertising easier and better. In addition to sponsoring a Happn.in list (as you know, Happn.in compiles top local trends for 67 cities worldwide and sends out the current list four times a day), you can now also now buy a Full Tweet Ad, an entire targeted tweet to the city (or cities) you want. We’ve also made the process of purchasing ad space on Happn.in way simpler and streamlined.

See the Advertising Overview to get started.

NOW, at the risk of sounding like those people, we actually, truly believe that advertising on Happn.in offers something unique and cost-effective. We know that ads can be gross; and ads on the internet can blink and dance; but ads can also be helpful and successful. We serve up ads to a local Twitter audience, something you can’t do anywhere else, and we try/want to do it in a non-obtrusive, non-annoying way.

Full Tweet Ads

Once a day, we send out a full ad to each of our 67 cities. When you buy the ad slot for that city, your message gets sent out to a targeted localized list of Twitter users. Advertising on Happn.in is the only way to tweet directly to a local Twitter audience.

Again, we only do this once a day, so your ad gets great exposure without annoying the Happn.in audience.

Full Tweet Ads cost $5

List Sponsorships

Four times a day, Happn.in sends out the list of top local Twitter trends to over (at the time of writing) 130,000 people in 67 cities. Each of these lists offers sponsorship space. Your name or business is included in the list that is tweeted out and stamped onto the full list that lives back at Happn.in.

List Sponsorships cost $2

Buy Credits in Bulk

Starting today, instead of buying advertising slots one by one, you can purchase advertising credits in one transaction; and then just pick the advertising slots you want. 1 credit = $1. And we throw in free credits the more you buy. These credits get stored with your account, so you can use them up all in one go or over time.

Any questions or feedback from the perspective of an advertiser or a diehard Happn.in user, please let us know

See the Advertising Overview to get started.