By keeping an eye on trends, it seems that users read comments from everyone, regardless of class, ethnic, or cultural background, or follower status. You assu

By keeping an eye on trends, it seems that users read comments from everyone, regardless of class, ethnic, or cultural background, or follower status. You assume that people use Twitter to keep an eye on trends. I'm not sure that more casual Twitter users do that. I know a lot of people who use Twitter purely as a status-update mechanism, so they can communicate with their friends, figure out where other people in the office are going for lunch, etc. I have a strong suspicion that the most-common use case for Twitter is not using it to follow trends or meet new people, and instead is very much like other social "networking" sites -- as an easy way to stay in touch with people the user already knows in real life.