Hey everyone, Josh here the creator. As a developer, I’m always looking out for an emerging market trend on which to bootstrap my own SaaS product. This is since market awareness and timing are often so critical, on top of execution skill of course!
So I built Trennd. Under the hood it continually monitors the web for interesting keywords & topics, classifies them using Google Trends data and packages everything as a neat web app where other people can contribute too.
The app itself is built with the Next.js React framework along with Express, Bootstrap and MongoDB. Next.js was new to me, but made sense since it comes with so much out of the box, including server side rendering.
Let me know if you have any questions, and any feedback is much appreciated!
Pretty neat, I see the most granular time scale currently supported is a 3-month window -- are there any plans to increase granularity towards a (near) real-time system? I get your crawler might be rate-limited at that scale and you would likely have to rethink the entire system architecture, but I think real-time data would open up a whole new dimension of possibilities for detecting/predicting trends perhaps even before public awareness catches up. I'd imagine there would be parties interested in paying for that kind of capability if that's the direction you're planning on taking this idea
Awesome I enjoyed making some trend charts, and the results are fun (i.e I added DevOps, Erlang, Elixir). I think there is a risk it could conceal too many errors and biases for it to be useful for trend analysis. Using services like Twitter and Reddit might introduce biases into your data skewing trends. The challenge is using data and not understanding the intent (is it positive, negative or neutral/sarcastic potentially negative/positive). Google Adwords is good at this. I applaud your effort; I hope you keep going but its a tough nut to crack. I use markets like Google Adwords Tools to do this at the moment, have you looked at it? I think more info around time, intent and volume.
Hi, it would be nice if the keywords had short explanations. I had to find out what an affinity designer and an enneagram was. Bubble tea was also quite new.
Hey Josh, very interesting concept. Thanks for building it!
I tried to use the "technology" category, but the results are not what I expected. Perhaps it would be more useful if I could narrow it down to more specific things, e.g. programming languages, or databases.
This definately has a market, but i'm not sure SaaS is it. More typical eCommerce products have a "flavor of the day" like effect, where an article is written in some niche community, and everyone in that community rushes out to buy the thing. Then a few months later, the craze is over. If you're Amazon, you can spot these trends easily (because they have everyone's sales data from the marketplace). If you're a small eCommerce company, unless you just happen to have that product on hand, and someone just happened to have found you, you may never even realize the trend existed. Being alerted that there is a sudden demand for a product, might give you a headstart on marketing and might help you negotiate a deal with a supplier before the supplier realizes what they have.
Very cool! As a front-end dev it's interesting (but I guess also not surprising) to see React and Vue with very steep curves.
I wanted to try adding Svelte, so I signed up by email, but that doesn't seem to be working. Then I tried Sign In With Twitter but, wow, it requires an awful lot of permissions! Among them... Follow new people, Update your profile, and Post Tweets for you. I'd be a lot happier signing in with Twitter if it were limited to read-only abilities.
The key value-add, in my mind, from that product, besides the trend, is the editorial content they include in the email. Of course, that's just me as a layperson.
I'd probably dupe their pricing model and approach: i.e., a limited number of weekly/monthly trends, subscribers get more.
Definitely - the glimpse newsletter looks good and is the same concept of surfacing new Google trends. I didn't like being limited to just a few trends per month everyone else sees via newsletter though.
I was looking for an interactive app with 1000 trends I could dig through. But as you say, then the editorial content/insight for each trend is key value-add. That's part of the reason I've built in for users to be able to add their own trends, insights and comments. If we can crowdsource it, then to some extent we don't have to trade-off quantity and quality.
And/or sell the service where you BYO keyword list and this ranks them. Keyword lists can themselves be scraped from forums and websites in the marked the client is interested. The scraping could also be an add on service.
This would lock in nicely with the keyword research that ahrefs, moz, etc. offer. And other various colour hat seo software.
Selling the data as an API is definitely a potential. I was originally thinking to allow CSV downloads of the data. Would an API be more useful for your client's use case?
It's interesting to see that topics like 'fentanyl', 'opiod' have done up.
Also 'criminal defenses', 'wrongful death claim' have gone up a lot as well - Perhaps they are related to spikes in searches for plastic surgery topics.
Also it's weird why almost all the topics on the front page are related to software development. It's like there is some kind of conspiracy to turn the world's population into software developers.
Nice idea. For very short time spans, I noticed some "trends" seem to be seasonal trends ("aperol", "lawn mower"...). It might be interesting to compare with the trend for the same search the year before at the same period, to be able to identify those cases (for intance, I cannot see from the graphs whether Aperol is more or less trendy this summer compared to last summer)
The examples on the front page looks surprisingly good, which makes me suspect they were hand-picked. Kind of beats the purpose of the app if I'm just shown trends the author and me already know about, since we seem to inhabit the same subcultures.
Many years ago I built a service on appengine to hit the auto complete api endpoint for every single and 2 letter prefix, as well as things like "how do I" or "what is the".
It ran for a few months before blowing up the free quota, but it was pretty cool while it lasted.. Seeing certain things bubble up and then disappear. Like right now 'lion king' is the first suggestion for 'l', but I doubt it was a month ago.
A peak every April and a dip every December?
This seems like the result of some smoothing algorithm needing ~4 months of data and resetting every year.
People search for more craft beer before Christmas (because they're looking for a unique gift) and less for AirBnB (because they get together with their families for the holidays).
Seasonal patterns in data about human behavior are the norm rather than the exception. That includes search trends. There are also monthly, weekly and daily cycles, as well as some that have not quite yearly period, e.g. Ramadan.
I'd also like to see downward trends, not just growing trend. From the last page or two, I see some downward trend, like "blog", "facebook", and "gmail". I don't know if it means the decline of popularity, but it is definitely interesting to see the declining graph.
Brilliant stuff. Fascinating to see how seasonal some of the searches are – "rosé" and "Aperol" spikes in July and December (southern/northern hemisphere summers?), "carbs" and "low-carbohydrate diet" peaks in January (when people want to change their habits?).
This is pretty brilliant. I'd hook up something to identify trends with companies that can potentially be invested in. Could be useful from a publicly traded stand point (Good ole stock picking) or even VC investing if the product was rapidly growing and not yet heavily invested in.
[+] [-] jhow15|6 years ago|reply
So I built Trennd. Under the hood it continually monitors the web for interesting keywords & topics, classifies them using Google Trends data and packages everything as a neat web app where other people can contribute too.
The app itself is built with the Next.js React framework along with Express, Bootstrap and MongoDB. Next.js was new to me, but made sense since it comes with so much out of the box, including server side rendering.
Let me know if you have any questions, and any feedback is much appreciated!
[+] [-] ashelmire|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deadcoder0904|6 years ago|reply
Also, if you are choosing the keywords then wouldn't the data be inaccurate for predicting trends as trends occur randomly?
[+] [-] yuy910616|6 years ago|reply
I'm working on something similar for a internal tool, so I'm curious to see what your solution is.
Thanks!
[+] [-] omarhaneef|6 years ago|reply
It can probably be used for lots of things: startups, as you mentioned, but also journalism ideas, investing ideas, job hunting and many more.
[+] [-] kevinguh|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maxencecornet|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tasssko|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] charlesism|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nurettin|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] markdown|6 years ago|reply
> built with the Next.js React framework
Wait wait wait... do you mean to say there's now a framework for a framework? Javascriptland continues to confound.
[+] [-] simonebrunozzi|6 years ago|reply
I tried to use the "technology" category, but the results are not what I expected. Perhaps it would be more useful if I could narrow it down to more specific things, e.g. programming languages, or databases.
Keep up the good work!
[+] [-] taneem|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gondo|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swalsh|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dceddia|6 years ago|reply
I wanted to try adding Svelte, so I signed up by email, but that doesn't seem to be working. Then I tried Sign In With Twitter but, wow, it requires an awful lot of permissions! Among them... Follow new people, Update your profile, and Post Tweets for you. I'd be a lot happier signing in with Twitter if it were limited to read-only abilities.
[+] [-] mtnGoat|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bluepeter|6 years ago|reply
The key value-add, in my mind, from that product, besides the trend, is the editorial content they include in the email. Of course, that's just me as a layperson.
I'd probably dupe their pricing model and approach: i.e., a limited number of weekly/monthly trends, subscribers get more.
[+] [-] jhow15|6 years ago|reply
I was looking for an interactive app with 1000 trends I could dig through. But as you say, then the editorial content/insight for each trend is key value-add. That's part of the reason I've built in for users to be able to add their own trends, insights and comments. If we can crowdsource it, then to some extent we don't have to trade-off quantity and quality.
[+] [-] suvelx|6 years ago|reply
I am currently working with a client who is exploring the options for building out a similar system.
[+] [-] quickthrower2|6 years ago|reply
This would lock in nicely with the keyword research that ahrefs, moz, etc. offer. And other various colour hat seo software.
[+] [-] jhow15|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onion2k|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jhow15|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mmazing|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] martin-adams|6 years ago|reply
No idea what that means, but it suggests why you're not seeing the same data.
[+] [-] mapster|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cryptica|6 years ago|reply
Also 'criminal defenses', 'wrongful death claim' have gone up a lot as well - Perhaps they are related to spikes in searches for plastic surgery topics.
Also it's weird why almost all the topics on the front page are related to software development. It's like there is some kind of conspiracy to turn the world's population into software developers.
[+] [-] tduberne|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] driverdan|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tw1010|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jhow15|6 years ago|reply
Right now they're monitoring the obvious techie havens, but I'm looking to expand their coverage to be more comprehensive.
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] punnerud|6 years ago|reply
You see these numbers as part of planning for a campaign. There is also an API for it.
[+] [-] justinsaccount|6 years ago|reply
It ran for a few months before blowing up the free quota, but it was pretty cool while it lasted.. Seeing certain things bubble up and then disappear. Like right now 'lion king' is the first suggestion for 'l', but I doubt it was a month ago.
[+] [-] RosanaAnaDana|6 years ago|reply
A peak every April and a dip every December? This seems like the result of some smoothing algorithm needing ~4 months of data and resetting every year.
This one even more consistent: https://trennd.co/trend/airbnb
[+] [-] yorwba|6 years ago|reply
Seasonal patterns in data about human behavior are the norm rather than the exception. That includes search trends. There are also monthly, weekly and daily cycles, as well as some that have not quite yearly period, e.g. Ramadan.
[+] [-] kmorris1077|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jhow15|6 years ago|reply
Upgraded my mongodb atlas cluster to resolve the issue, apologies.
[+] [-] uponcoffee|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Fnoord|6 years ago|reply
(In the spirit of "YouTube videos that have almost zero previous views" [1] / astronaut.io)
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20432772
[+] [-] otterpro|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anarchitect|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abbadadda|6 years ago|reply