OK I finally have to ask what the hell does 'trending' mean? I was watching a report on the Jeremy Clarkson fracas and the reporter mentioned he was trending on Twitter. Now I will admit here and now I don't get Twitter at all so this might explain why 'trending' is meaningless to me.
It just means the same thing "trending" has always meant, but refering to social media. A popularity, but a specific kind of intense self perpetuating popularity.
I always assumed that trending meant it was recently discovered and on its way to going 'viral'. I hate social media marketing twang.
Trending also implies that it won't remain popular for long. I was talking to an proprietor of a pub and he says that he has to pay attention to trends so that he knows the "drink of the week" as the younger crowed seems to drink what ever they see on TV. This probably explains why many customers as for Hardys when ordering a bottle of wine. Consequently he has stopped stocking single malt whiskey as it has fallen out of fashion.
These are the topics that are currently 'trending' in the UK. The list just contains the most mentioned phrases over the last few hours.
It's like clothing, it's called 'trendy' or 'the trend' and it will variate and change.. Things will be in, and out it all depends... So although they are a sense of being popular, it's more of a trend that will come and go.
If in doubt, ask Google: https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sour...=1&ie=UTF-8#q=what does trending mean&es_th=1
It's a wonderful little quirk of the English language. A trend is typically a change in a general direction (e.g. a clothing trend, people using blue LEDs in case mods, superheroes in summer action movies). Trending is the gerund form of trend used as a verb form (which is something somewhat unique to English). In the context of Twitter, trending just means that particular hashtag is being mentioned in a lot of tweets over a short period of time. In other words, that topic or hashtag has become a trend.
To answer this question - on the surface you probably could use either word and with the context of the sentence still get your point across. However, in modern parlance trending connotes a temporary popularity. It's a handy single word that means "popular at this moment in time." Edit: It just occurred to me that while trending and popular can mean more or less the same thing, they aren't necessarily synonyms. As I mentioned above, when used with social media trending means that the term or idea is being talked about by a lot of people at that moment. When something is popular, there is a positive connotation; however, just because a topic is trending doesn't mean the topic is popular. On easy example is the live production of Peter Pan that aired on NBC a few months ago. It was a trending topic on social media, but a lot of the dialog included negative comments about the show. When a company makes a faux pas, the public backlash can often center around a trending topic. Again, it's not because the company is popular - rather, it's become popular to hate on the company.
