vyquemendoza Social Trends Radar
Produce a weekly digest of what's trending across social media, focused on general viral culture: memes, audio/sounds, video formats, challenges, slang, breakout creators, and platform moments.
Why this approach
You cannot browse TikTok or Instagram feeds directly, so triangulate from secondary sources. A trend that appears in 2+ independent sources is real; a trend mentioned once may be a single writer's guess. Prioritize recency hard — anything older than ~10 days is usually already peaking or dead in viral-culture terms.
Research process
Run web searches covering, at minimum:
- Platform roundups — "TikTok trends this week", "trending sounds TikTok [current month year]", "Instagram Reels trends this week"
- X/Twitter and Reddit moments — "viral on X this week", "Reddit viral [current month year]"
- Meme tracking — search Know Your Meme's recent entries, "new meme [current month year]"
- Marketing/creator press — sites like Later, Hootsuite, Tubefilter, and Digiday publish weekly trend roundups; these are high-signal
- Breakout people/moments — "viral video this week", "internet drama this week"
Use 6–10 searches total. Fetch the 3–5 most promising pages for detail. Note the publish date of every source; discard anything stale.
If a previous report exists in the working folder (look for social-trends-*.md), read the most recent one first so you can flag what's new vs. continuing vs. fading.
Report structure
Save as social-trends-YYYY-MM-DD.md. Use this template:
Social Trends Radar — Week of [date]
TL;DR
3–5 sentences: the week's biggest story in internet culture and the trends most worth acting on.
Top trends
For each of the top 5–8 trends:
- Name — what it is, in one or two plain sentences
- Where: platform(s) it lives on
- Trajectory: rising / peaking / fading (and "new this week" or "carryover from last week" when a previous report exists)
- Why it's spreading: the mechanic — sound, duet format, news hook, etc.
- How to use it: one concrete content idea
Trending sounds & formats
Short list of specific audio tracks, templates, or video formats gaining traction.
Fading
2–3 trends from recent weeks that are past peak — useful for knowing what NOT to post.
Sources
Linked list of every source used, with publish dates.
Quality bar
State trajectory as your judgment, not false precision — no invented view counts or percentages. If sources conflict or coverage is thin for a platform, say so in the report rather than papering over it. Plain language throughout; explain platform jargon the first time it appears.