A Tale of Three Cities: Looking at the Trending Feature on Foursquare

This study examines and compares the temporal patterns and categorical trends of Foursquare's trending feature in three cities in the U.S. The three cities in our experiment are New York City, NY, Pittsburgh, PA and Erie, PA. We show that large cities like New York City trend more often and more consistently through time, while trending in smaller cities is influenced by holidays and weekend events. We also examine common categories of venues that trend in our test cities and see a similar theme in each city favoring food-based venues, nightlife venues and other venues. The purpose of this work is to gain a basic understanding of trending patterns in different cities and to understand why certain venues trend and others do not.