The Trend Tracker
Currently tracking Google blogsearch results on:
Subscribe to the Trend Tracker RSS feed to see when we add new sites to track.
Last.fm vs. Pandora
Last.fm and Pandora are two services that help users discover music. We have only used Last.fm and haven’t given Pandora much of a look, possibly because we like Last.fm’s support for AmaroK. Comparison between the two services has been generating some buzz recently and we started to track them on the 6th of March.
Flickr vs. YouTube
Flickr.com was acquired by Yahoo early 2005 and around the same time, YouTube.com launched. We’ve decided to track the YouTube trend and compare it to the massive buzz surrounding Flickr.com. How much buzz will YouTube have to generate before they get acquired?
Zopa vs. Prosper
The social lending outfit Zopa (see: “Zopa: Disruptive technology par excellence“) got an American brother in early February when Prosper.com launched. We started tracking the buzz surrounding the two outfits according to Google’s blogsearch engine on the 6th and the results are as follows:
Fireant.tv
On the 24th of January 2006, Techcrunch posted an entry titled “FireAnt just rocks!” giving the product and its web two thumbs up. We decided to monitor what effect this recommendation might have on the blogosphere buzz by tracking how many links to the site Google’s blogsearch would pick up. Following is a daily update of the result:
After we started tracking, MacUser linked to the site on the 25th and on the 26th Digg and del.icio.us followed suite and the buzz tracker jumped accordingly.
This trend doesn’t say much about the influence of TechCrunch per se. It does however imply that, in Gladwell terminology, sites such as TechCrunch serve as mavens to connectors such as Digg.