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Why are you caching Twitter Data?

Twitter has a rate limit of 150 API calls per hour for each IP address when those calls are anonymous. We cache the reults of the Twitter trending topics call for an amount of time that is configurable in the plugin dialog. This lets us get around the rate limit issue, as well as improve performace by retrieving the topics from a local cache.

What are Trending Topics?

Twitter is a near real-time messaging community, and trending topics are things that many people are currently tweeting about. In some cases these topics indicate breaking news or popular ideas of the moment. In other cases they're still popular, since many people are tweeting them, but the reasons behind why a specific topic begins to trend was often a mystery. With version 1.0.2 of Twitterfools Trending Topics, user can now roll over a topic and see descriptive information from WhatTheTrend.com about each topic.