Jump! Blog Social Media Love

What are you thinking?

This week I have been working on a project that has got me interested in how one might get a snapshot of the interests of the general public at any one time.  I thought I’d share some of the tools I have been using.

There are a number of trend tools based around blogs and user generated content but looking at them from the eye of a non-technical user these tend to be bias towards more technical topics:

Twitter trends:
http://search.twitter.com/

Technorati’s Popular Blogs:
http://technorati.com/pop/

and even Delicious to find out what people are book marking:
http://delicious.com/

With all the talk of social media tools giving us a better insight into our customers / audience / users it was interesting (if not surprising when you think about it) that the best tools to get a taste of the general publics interests are based around search engine results, still the most popular of all online tools.

Google Trends:
http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends

Yahoo Buzzlog:
http://buzzlog.buzz.yahoo.com/overall/

and Asks tool for popular searches:
http://sp.ask.com/en/docs/iq/iq.shtml

I love looking at all the different ways people search for the same  topic, especially those not yet covered by the mainstream media and as such have not had terms around them concreated.

Finding a way to deliver useful content to the masses based on these interests is the next stop!