Also yes he could definitely do some text mining on the trending topics, that would be an interesting topic.

http://whotrended.it/top-trends

the first by far is #tcot so apparently conservatives are doing well on Twitter.

For the analysis I think one year of data is probably a bit on the short side. But if I let it run for a decade (providing Twitter is still used by then), we'll definitely see a generational effect that could be interesting.