If you like Google Trends, get ready for a souped-up competitor that identifies Web buzz across many other sources, such as Amazon, YouTube and eBay. Trendrr can track the viral rise or fall of a Web hit, and its CEO discusses the impact of the start-up.
Digital Journal — Have you always wanted to see a graph of Amazon sales of Radiohead’s In Rainbows? Or maybe you want to compare how many MySpace friends belonging to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Joe Bide? (Obama destroys them all). Forget Google Trends. A deeper site, layered with more sources to select, is available for anyone who’s curious about what’s buzzworthy on the Web.
Enter Trendrr, a measurement service tracking online popularity and “viral-ness” on the Web. It mines 42 databases to turn chaotic info into more structured data, presenting stats in clear readable graphs. Trendrr scours sites such as YouTube, Amazon, Technorati and Google News. Those are the expected sites, but Trendrr also checks out data in less renown areas such as eBay, boxofficemojo, Monster and Compete.
Available free for 20 queries, Trendrr lets you compare and mash up various graphs you can create, offering the options to select a line graph, a table, flow chart or bar graph. It turns something like YouTube video views into a readable graph. So it’s ideal for any vain filmmaker looking to track his uploaded videos or a curious music fan wondering how often Madonna videos have been viewed in the past month.
“This is a good way to get a holistic view of the Web,” says Mark Ghuneim, CEO of Trendrr, in an interview with DigitalJournal.com. “If you have social content on the Web, Trendrr lets you take a look at the ROI on that behaviour.”
Corporations see the value in a service like Trendrr (still in beta). In fact, that’s where the idea began, Ghuneim says. For his marketing company WiredSet, Ghuneim was detailing reports on a company’s brand using a software predecessor to Trendrr. For a client like MTV, for example, WiredSet would be able to track how many press mentions the MTV Music Awards received through a Google News graph. Record companies could take advantage of finding out how sales data compares to Soundscan info.
And with Trendrr, it’s simple to layer one graph or another, using what it calls the virtual scratchpad. A drag-and-drop process allows you to mash two graphs together and see the resulting line graph, for instance. Ghuneim calls it a unique invention he thinks will set his company apart.
The closest comparison one could make to Trendrr is Google Trends. But as Ghuneim points out, Google Trends only looks at Google data. “We look at everything,” he declares. “And we added annotations to our graphs, so users can be interactive with the data.”
There’s a social network element to Trendrr. User profiles contain “My Graphs” and they are easily shareable between friends. Each graph has offers an embed code. A Digg-like element involves a “vote up” button in order to make sure the Popular category is truly filled with well-received graphs. Other categories include Discussed, Viewed and Recent.
Once a free subscription’s 20 queries are used up, a member will be able to purchase either the enterprise-level version or use a pay-per-query model. Ghuneim says his company has yet to decide on a structured paid model, but he doesn’t envision the cost being more than $1 for each additional query.
The enterprise version works well for companies that want an unlimited amount of queries, a white-label look to add custom logos (instead of the Trendrr design), and a way to add a deeper reporting level. Essentially, the enterprise model could be filled with a company’s own data and the company can also select with data sources to mine.
So far, Trendrr has attracted “thousands of members,” Ghuneim says, thanks to his parent company’s strength in getting the word out. “We’re a marketing company after all,” he notes, adding how networking through Twitter and Facebook gave the fledgling site some solid buzz.
Trendrr is appealing to companies looking for an overview of consumer habits, but it’s also useful for the curious Web surfer. It’s addictive to find out when sales of the Iron Man Blu-ray disc plummeted on Amazon (Oct. 12) or how many times “NHL” has been mentioned in blog posts on Oct. 14 compared to Sept. 2 (46,500 to 58,000). The drawback? Knowing when to hit the “x” button and call it quits.
