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

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.

One feature of Happn.in that we’ve been working on a lot lately is the Labs section. Happn.in collects a lot of location specific data from Twitter, and the Labs is where we play around with that data. It is extraordinarily fun. How often has PBR been a trend, for instance? The answer: Once – in atlanta on May 12 when the El Bar was giving away the beer for free.

You get to do a sort of Harper’s Index for Twitter.

Recently, I searched for Garage Sale, Yard Sale, and Tag Sale to see how and where these three phrases show up on Twitter. Here’s some of what I found.

Number of times Garage Sale has been a local trend

100

Number of times Yard Sale has been a local trend

54

Number of times Tag Sale has been a local trend

0

City in which Garage Sale is mentioned the most

Minneapolis (it’s been a trend 11 times since Happn.in launched in May)

City that mentions Garage Sale second most

Tied: Dallas and Portland (7 each)

City in which Yard Sale is mentioned most

Tied: LA and Indianapolis (7 each)

Number of Times Yard Sale is mentioned in Minneapolis

0

Percentage of times that Garage Sale has been a trend on a weekday

23%

Percentage that Yard Sale has been a trend on a weekday

23%

The Happn.in Labs really highlights what Happn.in is about – making the information on Twitter useful and interesting. We hope you’ll check it out.

We thought it'd be fun to show the phrases that Happn.in visitors clicked on the most during May and early June. Below are the Top 25 trendiest-of-the-trends -- not only did these items make the Happn.in lists, but they were clicked often by website visitors.

You can search for more statistics on these phrases and any others in our Labs pages.

1. adam lambert
2. justin timberlake
3. gossip girl
4. mother lover
5. project natal
6. susan boyle
7. swine flu
8. mega prayer
9. celebrity apprentice
10. terminator salvation
11. farmers market
12. family guy
13. happy memorial
14. wolfram alpha
15. party tonight
16. kris allen
17. palm pre
18. gay marriage
19. ben gordon
20. red bull
21. joan rivers
22. miss california
23. blind blame
24. new moon
25. pool party

Mega prayer? This Twitter update brought in throngs of people from Sydney.

Some other phrases that were just a bit further down the list:

• brat fest
• team ninja
• peanut butter
• free chicken
• critical mass
• ice cream paint

Now that we've got about a month of Happn.in data to play around with, we're realizing that we can pull some pretty interesting things out of the archives. A rough example; the map below displays the Animal Collective (that's a band) tour as it was tweeted about by people around the US:

The smallest dot is in DC, which was the first date of the tour. The dots get larger and darker as time goes on, until the tour ends in Florida. There are some points that don't exactly match up with the tour (apparently you people in SF just LOVE Animal Collective), but for the most part, it's a nice match.

To see the data we used for this map, hit our new Search page. And at the bottom of this post are their actual tour dates.

We're in the midst of working on some tools to let you guys visualize the Happn.in archives yourselves. Anybody have ideas for how they'd like to explore the data?

ANIMAL COLLECTIVE TOUR DATES

• May 11, 09 Washington, DC – 9:30 Club
• May 12, 09 Philadelphia, PA – Electric Factory
• May 13, 09 New York, NY – Terminal 5
• May 14, 09 Boston, MA – House of Blues
• May 15, 09 Montreal, PQ – Metropolis
• May 16, 09 Toronto, ON – Sound Academy
• May 18, 09 Royal Oak, MI – Royal Oak Music Hall
• May 19, 09 Milwaukee, WI – Turner Hall Ballroom
• May 20, 09 Minneapolis, MN – First Avenue
• May 24, 09 Vancouver, BC – Commodore Ballroom
• May 25, 09 Portland, OR – Roseland Theater
• May 26, 09 Oakland, CA – Fox Theatre
• May 27, 09 Big Sur, CA – Henry Miller Memorial Library
• May 29, 09 Los Angeles, CA – Wiltern
• May 30, 09 Las Vegas, NV – House of Blues
• May 31, 09 Tucson, AZ – Rialto Theater
• Jun 01, 09 Albuquerque, MN – Sunshine Theater
• Jun 02, 09 Boulder, CO – Boulder Theatre
• Jun 04, 09 Dallas, TX – House Of Blues
• Jun 05, 09 Austin, TX – Stubbs
• Jun 06, 09 Oxford, MS – The Library
• Jun 08, 09 St. Petersburg, FL – State Theatre
• Jun 09, 09 Fort Lauderdale, FL – Culture Room
• Jun 10, 09 Orlando, FL – Club Firestone