What’s the trend on Twitter? Ask What The Trend. Yes, it’s another Twitter search engine, giving you the most popular terms being spread throughout the Twitterverse. But What The Trend will also tell you why that particular term is trending.
Check the homepage and you’ll see a long list of popular terms being used on Twitter, along with some basic stats such as when it first became a trend (i.e. 10 hours ago), when it’s last trend was, and the What The Trend permalink for accessing additional information around that particular trending term. To the right of each trend you’ll see a short blurb on why that term is trending. For instance, the reason given for the trending term “KFC” is:
KFC is trending because Oprah Winfrey is trying to convince people that Kentucky Fried Chicken is not the reason she is currently once again very fat.
The descriptions don’t sound very scientific. And that’s because they aren’t. These blurbs are actually written and edited by users, and can be updated at any time. This really adds to the entertainment value of What The Trend, even if the descriptions aren’t entirely helpful for the actual reasons behind a particular trend.
If you click on a trending term from the homepage, you’ll be directed to the details page for that term. Here you’ll see the basic stats again, along with the user-generated description and an option to edit or tweet it. Below this three columns display the latest tweets featuring the trending term, the latest news related to the trending term, and the most recent Flickr photos that pertain to the trending term. In this multi-faceted way, What The Trend’s term detail page is similar to OneRiot, which also takes a broader approach to offering information and Twitter-related community options around a given search term.
Speaking of search, the ability to do so on What The Trend would actually be a value-add for the overall service, especially considering the amount of information the site is making available for a given trending term. While this may or may not be something that What The Trend is looking to layer into its new service, the company does have an API available for developers, expanding the potential for What The Trend data to be parsed for other purposes, perhaps even for a search application.
While there’s no shortage of Twitter-related search engines, meme trackers and trending services, What The Trend is hoping its user-involvement will help it stand apart from the crowd. Having a stand-alone or an integrated app that performs such functions may become increasingly moot as Twitter itself layers in more direct search functionality to its site. So third party services such as What The Trend will do well to provide more features than what you’ll find on Twitter, and remain user-centric as an integrated, community-driven application.