Trending on Twitter: Korean popstars, Chilean miners and the future

What The Trend, a Twitter aggregator that has staked a claim as “the front page of the real time web”, released some rather surprising findings of the biggest Twitter trends for the week. Strangely enough, the Chilean miners were beaten by a South Korean pop star, proving once again that it is a mistake to underestimate the huge impact of social networks in Asia.

There is the usual smattering of celebrity-ridden scandal, sports and current affairs, all mixed in with a couple of memes that gave people a chance to peer into their crystal balls.

Read on to see the full list of the week’s Top 10 Twitter trends.

1. SUPER JUNIOR: Kim Hee Chul of Korean band Super Junior tweeted a number of self-drawn pictures, and fans are excitedly retweeting them

2. CHILEAN MINING RESCUE: Rescue operation “San Lorenzo” successfully freed 33 trapped Chilean miners from the collapsed San Jose Mine near Copiapo/Chileabout. The real-time TV feed led to not only tweets and trends about the operation itself, but about the individual miners as they were rescued one-at-a-time.

3. #in10years: People are tweeting things about how they think the world will change in 10 years.

4. #myweakness: People are tweeting their weaknesses.

5. NOBEL PRIZE: Mario Vargas Llosa won the Nobel Literature Prize. Imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo was awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Prize for Economics was awarded to Peter A. Diamond, Dale T. Mortensen and Christopher A. Pissarides.

6. #Love: For those you love with all your soul.

7. TWITTER: Twitter’s new design has now been rolled out to all users. Some users reported getting an “Internal Server Error” when trying to retweet, and that led to another flurry of conversation.

8.#MyHomelessSignWouldSay : What your future holds…

9. David Arquette-Courtney Cox: Courtney Cox and David Arquette decided to separate after 11 years of marriage, and Arquette managed to overshare on Howard Stern’s radio show.

10. NFL: Tweets about football, with Viking Quarterback Brett Favre’s arm pain, the College GameDay Saturday, NFL GameDay Sunday, and quarterback Tony Romo receiving the most discussion.