Trendrr

We are pleased to announce the first iteration of a Firefox Add-on for Trendrr. With an extension integrated into the browser, our services are quickly accessible and the process of tracking trends has become even simpler. Similar to bookmarking functionality, you do not have to leave the page you wish to track. Simply right click on the page or use our toolbar icon to submit a trend directly to your account.

At this time, there are three main uses of the add-on:

• You can easily track the current URL in your browser as stated above. As an example, if your browser is located at a YouTube video page, the URL will be recognized as such and the add-on will instruct your account to start tracking such information as views, comments, and number of favorites.
• You may also type in a phrase, or use a highlighted phrase, and track these words on many of our data sources such as Delicious Bookmarks, eBay auctions, and Flickr tags.
• Lastly, you can search existing trends that other users are already tracking. After entering keywords, a new tab will open with any user graphs that match the content you are seeking.

We encourage those Firefox users in the Trendrr community to download and experiment with our new tracking tool. As with all newly created add-ons, Mozilla has categorized ours as experimental. In order for the add-on to be available for the general public, we need people to leave us reviews on addons.mozilla.org. The direct link is below. Thanks for your help and enjoy the add-on. We're excited to hear what you think.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8663

Moving Forward

We wanted to offer a solution to standardize the publishing of 2.0 metrics around community and content and the behavior around each.

Today we are pleased to release under Creative Commons

MSS - Metrics Syndication Standard.

MSS is a dialect of XML. All MSS files must conform to the XML 1.0 specification, as published on the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) website. The goal of MSS is to provide sites with a standard way to publish easily ingestible metrics relating to its community and content.

More on MSS can be found on the newly launched developer portal including the schema documentation and some sample MSS feeds based on trendrr.com content.

http://developer.trendrr.com/mss/

Additionally we have released a more robust and complete API .
See the documentation  http://developer.trendrr.com/api/

A Trendrr Twitter channel is up for those who tweet.
http://twitter.com/trendrr

Live this week 

Imeem - Video stats.
Tracks the number of favorites, rated, comments and number of views per day for a particular video on imeem.com

Pardon the blog fade, we have been busy behind the scenes working on all the ideas and feedback we've received during this phase of the beta. Thank you to everyone who hit the feedback button.

In the next week we we be relaunching the home page with a brand new layout. Also with that build is a tour on how to rock Trendrr. This will provide a blow by blow walk through of Trendrr's feature sets and functionality.

We have also been banging out some new data plug-ins.   Launching first will be a new batch of social media and video tracking tools. Complementing the eight current sources.  

We currently have in place:

AOL,  DailyMotion, Google Video, LiveVideo
Meta Cafe, MySpace Video, Veoh, YouTube

We are adding video tracking for:    

Bebo, CollegeHumor, Revver, SpikeTV,  Yahoo,
vSocial, Crackle, IMeem, Hi5 ...

On the non social front we will be adding census and government data, currency exchange rates and weather tracking. These all should make the mash-ups and trend spotting all the more  interesting.

Soon we will be launching our newly expanded custom data API. With this release of the API you will now be able do the following.

New API Features:

- (graph) provides the graph in various feed formats.  
- (dataset) provides the graph in various feed formats.  
-  Allows you to insert Data Points into the system using a simple RESTful url
-  Start tracking using any of the available trendrr data sources
-  This creates a custom data set.  You will be able to then populate it with data using the api  

If you are an agency, brand or anyone who needs to keep track of online behavior and consumption you can use our new API to track and compare and share not only on Trendrr but in your reporting or on your own site.

If you would like to beta test the new API please get in touch.  The new features should be helpful to anyone who wants to build ancillary applications and middleware programs. Enjoy.

Last but not least we added a new plug-in architecture that allows us to collect historical data when available, the new stock plug-in takes advantage of this, and collects data from the last 1.5 years (had to stop somewhere).

Updates as they happen

Unlike previous weeks, this time the amount of press a movie recieved was directly reflected in it's box office gross as Baby Mama brought in upwards of $18 million for first place. TheTina Fey- Amy Pohler combo comedy beat out John Cho and Kal Penn's Harold and Kumar Go To Guntanamo Bay, which came in second with approximately $14 million.

While over buzz and news stories regarding both films greatly increased in the last week, Baby Mama not only consistently generated more press but also saw the number of related news stories increasing at a higher rate.

 Updates...

The Trendrr team has been rolling out new data plug-ins like silly fast this week.

New this week you can now track, compare and share data around.

-  MySpace
-  Twitter
-  Craigslist

You can now track song plays on MySpace,  Twitter account information, followers
and posting freaquency.  We added tickets on top of jobs on craigs list.

Enjoy

 Related blog posts regarding Google and Yahoo over the last 2 months as you can see the effect of the Yahoo/Microsoft talks and then the rumors regarding the potential Yahoo/Google combo.

Easch day a new build adds new features, data sources and bug fixes so please keep the feedback coming

Updates that have been made to Trendrr in the last few days include customization of graph colors and the addition of Qunatcast data source.

This week we'll be adding the ability for you to track your Twitter account on Trendrr. In addition to tracking the number of followers, you can track the number of daily updates and number of people being followed for any Twitter account.

If you have any questions, are running into any problems or are interested in using Trendrr for your business, just e-mail us at feedback@trendrr.com

The Brittany Snow vehicle Prom Night came in first at the box office with $22.7 million. However to more equally compare revenue acorss films of different release sizes we broke down the Weekend Per Screen Box Office Numbers-
Prom Night- $8,407 per sceen
Street Kings- $4,864 per screen
Smart People- $3,797 per screen (limited release)

Despite generating the most blog buzz and news articles heading into the weekend, Smart People still drew the lowest per screen revenue while the box office topping Prom Night had mild bloz buzz, both surrounding the movie and star Brittany Snow

  Despite a limited release and just $1.5 million at the box office on Friday, Smart People (starring Dennis Quiad, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Ellen Page) still generated more news stories than Prom Night and Street Kings both of which were nationally released. Yet the Britney Snow horror flick managed to bring in the most money at Friday's box office with $9.5 million with Street Kings (with Keanu Reeves and Forrest Whitaker) bringing in $4 million and on pace for a $12+ million weekend.

Blog buzz regarding the actors of this weekend's movies. In the last 3 weeks blog posts regarding Elen Page and Smart People not only increased the most but has also generated the most online buzz. Both Forrest Whitaker, starring in Street Kings and Britney Show's new film Prom Night generated similar levels of online buzz and both increased 60% over the last 3 weeks.

Here's just a few tips on how to add and track data to ensure for the most accurate tracking and results.

• To start off go to 'start tracking' on the left navigation column of the screen.
• Once you select which data source you'd like to use, click 'add' to enter the term/input you'd like to track

The following is specifically regarding blog posts, news stories and jobs (basically anything where you can search by terms or phrases):

• All phrases and terms should be entered in quotation marks and seperated by '+' if you'd like to obtain data that contains multiple seperate terms.
• For example, if you'd like to track the number of blog posts with the phrase 'Spider Man' it would be entered as "Spider Man". Additionally if you'd like to track blog posts that include the terms 'Spider Man' and 'horrible movie' it would be entered as "Spider Man"+"horrible movie".
  

How To: Making Graphs Public / Private

• When you make a graph it is by default public.

• Graphs are published into the public trends page one (1) week from when it is created.
  

(this allows for the graph to gain data points
and for you to make it private if you choose to.)

• To make a graph private (your eyes only) just click on the "make private" link to the right of any graph you made.

New Data Sources

•  Added Monster + Craigslist tracking
•  Added Quantcast Plugin
•  Testing Twitter Plugin

 

new ...

Added Craigslist and Monster data sources
Finalizing - Quantcast plug-in

RSS Feeds:
Add the following rss feeds
http://trendrr.com/trends/rss/discussed
http://trendrr.com/trends/rss/recent
http://trendrr.com/trends/rss/popular
http://trendrr.com/trends/rss/viewed

Trendrr blog:
http://www.trendrr.com/blog/trendrr/rss

User blogs:
http://www.trendrr.com/blog/{USERNAME}/rss

 

The latest feature to Trendrr is the Simple Graph Syndication, SGS  which was just added today. A detailed overview of how to use it can be found at Dustin's blog.  We are publishing the schema under Creative Commons.

Here's a breakdown of the RESTful API, which allows you to track any custom data you choose, ranging from your number of twitter followers to the number of people who accepted your invite to an event on facebook.

Also be sure to check out Dustin's blog for the latest
technichal breakdowns regarding the site's build and new features.

Lots of new users and lots of feedback thanks and please keep it coming.  

After a week online we have had a big re-think on the home page and have opted to start from scratch and change both its look and functionality, expect that in a new build soon. 

Surprisingly blog posts regarding younger actors Emile Hirsch (of Speed Racer) and Shia LaBouf (of Indiana Jones) remains low, despite the fact that Hirsch is coming off an Oscar nomination and LaBouf starred in Michael Bay's Transformer's last summer. In comparison neither Ford nor Bale has starred in a major tentpole movie over a year yet online discussion surroudning them remains high.

Technorati blog posts regarding Speed Racer, which permieres 5/8, Indiana Jones, which opens 2 weeks later on 5/22 and then Batman Begins sequel Dark Knight which opens 7/18.

Despite Speed Racer being the Wachowski brother's first movie since The Matrix trilogy buzz remains low while discussion of Indiana Jones and Dark Knight just continues to climb.

Here's a quick overview of how to use the Scratchpad and get the most out of its features.

The scratchpad, located on the right column of the page, allows you to easily compare trends and customize graphs. Simply drag any graphs you come across, whether it was created by you or another user, into the scratchpad and use that space as a launching board to further customize, compare and ultimately analyze trends. Graphs remain in the scratchpad as you move from page to page within trendrr and there are also 3 separate screens in the scratchpad, allowing you to conduct 3 separate comparisons at the same time.

For example, if you come across a graph for ‘Amazon Sales of GTA4’ and you want to compare that to overall blog posts regarding the video game simply drag that graph into the scratchpad. Then if you see a graph regarding ‘Number of Videos on YouTube Regarding XFiles’ and you think that might be cool just to compare to another graph you haven’t found yet, you can click on the dark grey box within the scratchpad to bring up a clean scratchpad screen (with the previous graph regarding GTA4 still remaining in the scratchpad). Later on when you find the graph showing ‘Number of Google Blog Posts Regarding GTA4’ you can drag that graph into the scratchpad screen already showing the ‘Amazon Sales of GTA4’ and now the two graphs  have been condensed into one. From there you save the newly created graph and this will bring up the full-screen customize graph page. From there you can customize the graph as normal, changing the date range, title, and type of graph, as well as adding tags and even blogging the graph. However that graph will also remain in your scratchpad until you ‘delete/remove’ it, and it’s important to remember that deleting it here will not delete the new version of the graph you just saved but rather just delete the graph from your scratchpad.

Going back to the XFiles trend comparison if you happen to see a graph tracking the ‘Number of Blog Posts Regarding Chris Carter’ you already have the graph tracking XFiles YouTube videos saved on your scratchpad so you can simply drag this graph into your scratchpad (into the screen where the XFiles Youtube videos graph is showing) to create a new graph comparing these two trends. Then you would take the same steps used to customize the graphs showing trends for GTA4 to customize and save the newly created XFiles graph.

Yet if you don’t want to compare more than one graph and just want to change an individual graph the you come across on trendrr you can simply click on the ‘customize’ link on the button of that graph and from there change either the type of graph, title, or date range and also add your own tags to the graph. From there this new version of the graph will also be saved in your ‘my trends’ section.

Be sure to keep an eye out for our daily blog post which can be found at the Trendrr Blog and also featured graphs which are on the Trendrr homepage and, like all other graphs on trendrr, can be dragged into the scratchpad for you to customize.

Check out all of the new data sources that were recently added over the last week. New data sources include:

• Daily plays for MySpace videos
• # of comments and # of favoriteds for YouTube Vidoes
• # of related Flickr photos
• Daily page views, # of comments and # of friends for MySpace pages

 With Leatherheads, starring George Clooney, Renee Zelweger and John Krasinski set to open 4/4 related blog posts and YouTube videos regarding the movie have begun in increase rapidly.

The 66th World Science Fiction Convention, has announced the ballot for the 2008 Hugo Awards.

Best Novel nominations include..

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon
Brasyl by Ian McDonald
Rollback by Robert J. Sawyer
The Last Colony by John Scalzi
Halting State by Charles Stross

Tracking the sales for each since the announcement.

Many trends and items that are currently being tracked in Trendrr have historical data going back as far as 2005 and 2006. This particulary pertains to many artists being tracked, and through customizing a graph and changing the date range you can see bands gain popularity over time with first their MySpace friends increasing and then related blog posts and ultimately news stories following.

The above graph represents news stories regarding Billy Joel over the last 2 years, with news stories spiking in February 2007 when Billy Joel sang the National Anthem at the Super Bowl.
 

New data is constantly being added to Trendrr to track. As you wait for some of your trends to aggregate data, check out some of the newer items being tracked as well as some of the older items with historical data going back over a year. The newest trends can always be found under 'Trends' in the top nav bar.

Any trend you come across, regardless of the original user that created it, can be dragged into the Scratchpad (on the right) and ultimately customized. Change the date range, combine 2 or more graphs to directly compare trending, and then from there save, tag, and blog, as everyone has their own blog (a link to which is next to your user icon in the left column).


If you run into any problems or have any questions feel free to e-mail us at feedback@trendrr.com.

Cool graph of the climbing sales of GTA 4 for both XBox 360 and PS3. After much delay, the game is finally set to be released on 4/29.

HBO - YouTube - Digital Distribution and Partnership

Home Box Office (HBO) debuted a branded channel on YouTube, featuring a selection of video content from shows such as Extras and Entourage.

They have 134 clips on the offical channel and it seems a lot more
clips on YouTube with HBO content.

At the time of this post it was the 87th most popular partner channel.

Joined: May 17, 2006

Here's a look at the blog buzz surrounding Showtime's returning series. While The Tutors returns the end of March, new episodes of Dexter, Weeds, and Brotherhood aren't expected to air until late-August or September.

Also as expected Dexter's airing on CBS Sunday's at 10pm has slightly inreased overall awareness and online discussion regarding the series.

- all gone thanks - next ones up soon

Opening up 30 more accounts...
e-mail wiredset@gmail.com with the subject line 'trendrr' to receive a beta account

In the week following Jamie Lynn Spears’ pregnancy announcement news stories regarding the actress increased over 6,000% with 2,854 new related stories and a total of 2,895 news stories on 12/25/07.

In comparison, in the last week following the news of Spitzer’s extra-curricular activities on 3/10 news stories regarding the now-former Governor rose approximately 800% with 26,359 new related stories and a total of 29,691 related news stories. Not surprisingly, Spitzer had an overall higher number of related news stories consistently leading up to his scandal than Spears did, simply due to the nature of his job.

Also notable, blog posts regarding Spears also shot up in the week following the 12/18/07 OK! Magazine story, spiking 2 days later with 94,000 related posts, a 9% increase. However in the full week related posts ultimately leveled off, rising a net 1%, while news stories continued to rise. Yet blog posts regarding Spitzer continued to rise in the week following his announcement, rising 18% with a total of 195,218 related posts on 3/17/08.

Additionally, YouTube videos regarding Spitzer increased over 120% in the last week with a total of 1,590 related videos on 3/18.

In the three weeks following the Janauary 8th New Hampshire Primary news stories regarding Hilary Clinton doubled, rising just over 100% while Clinton’s MySpace friends rose just 7% with 11,789 new friends and a total of 171, 018 MySpace friends on 2/1 leading into Super Tuesday.

Here Comes Everybody, the latest in a growing number of Web 2.0 books, came out 2/28 and has since been generating a growing about of buzz accross a variety of blogs and mainstream newspapers.

Yet in the 2 weeks Shirky's book has climbed just 48 spots on the Amazon sales rank to a rank of #369. In comparison, Chris Anderson's 2-year-old book The Long Tail continues to generate strong sales, climbing 281 spots in the same time period to an Amazon sales rank of #713.

While Here Comes Everybody is 344 spots about The Long Tail, the sustainability of Anderson's book is quite notable, especially in the technology and trend sub-genre. It will certainly be interesting to see if Shirky can maintain sales (and buzz) over time.

Private Practice, Pushing Daisies and Dirty Sexy Money are the only 3 hour-long skiens from ABC that recieved season 2 pick ups. However none of these shows will be returning this year and many believe they were essentially saved by the writer's strike as all 3 showed drew below-expected ratings during their stint on the air from September to December/January.

Not surprisingly the Grey's Anatomy spinoff had the most press heading into the fall season, however the drama was able to maintain this level of press throughout the year, generating 6 times as many related Google news stories as fellow frosh shows Dirty Sexy Money and Pushing Daisies.

Heima

Sigur Rós took overthe homepage of YouTube becoming the first group to ever have a feature-length music DVD streamed on the site.

The 90 Min documentary 'Heima' ran in full on the site. The band also ran a UGC contest ..create their own version of 'Heima', using audio and video clips posted online which ran along side the doc.

When all twelve available video slots on YouTube's homepage are devoted to a specific theme and/or event is termed a 'homepage takeover'

Would like to blog some simple examples on how one might track
compare and share data.

We tracked two TV shows on AMC  "Breaking Bad"  and " Mad Men"  after they started collecting data I compared them via the scratchpad and made a mashup graph of them both (below) 

You can do the same even before you own data starts collecting and tracking.

You can take any of the existing public graphs (on the trends page) and do the same thing.

Another note:  when you customize a graph that was not yours a copy is made and added to your account of the new customized graph and your become the owner of that new graph.

Welcome to Trendrr:  Track, Compare and Share data.

Beta users please login in and start tracking what you like.

Please send us feedback about anything and everything. Want to be in the next round of invites for the larger public beta - please sign-up.

We are all graph makers now.

A good overview of Trendrr.

Some API info can be found on Dustin's blog



Production credits: 
Created by Dustin, produced by Matt and conceived by Mark