Mulberry · Market landscape
A living view of which data sources social and cultural trend intelligence teams are running, integrating now, and watching. Updated as the market shifts.
User-defined algorithm growth
July 2026
Feeds are becoming user-steered streams rather than one-size-fits-all channels. X now favors posts from mutuals, and Threads and Instagram shipped controls that let users reshape their own algorithm, which changes how trends surface and how representative any single sample is.
Read More: techcrunch.com, techcrunch.com
Short-form broadening to episodic
May to June 2026
The short-form era is broadening into longer and episodic formats. Bluesky added long-form articles, Meta began testing Series for episodic Reels, and Instagram pushed longer-form and live formats to its TV app. Trend tracking now has to read beyond the fifteen-second clip.
Read More: techcrunch.com, techcrunch.com, techcrunch.com
Reddit access closing
2026
Reddit is closing its open, machine-readable access. It moved to shut down the unauthenticated endpoints that allowed scraping for years, and as of mid-2026 old Reddit requires a login. With demand for Reddit still rising, free anonymous collection is ending, which raises the value of compliant, licensed coverage for one of the most-watched trend sources.
Read More: reclaimthenet.org
Video intelligence consolidating
May 2026
Sprinklr acquired ViralMoment, the leading standalone short-form video-intelligence vendor. Multimodal video and audio analysis is consolidating into the large listening suites rather than staying with independents.
Read More: sprinklr.com
| IntegratedActive features of platforms | |||
| Source | Buyer Expectation | Demand Trend | Providers |
|---|---|---|---|
| TikTok | High | Growing | 18 |
| High | Stable | 14 | |
| YouTube | High | Declining | 17 |
| High | Growing | 15 | |
| X | High | Growing | 18 |
| Snapchat | Medium | Stable | 3 |
| Tumblr | Low | Declining | 1 |
| Quora | Medium | Declining | 2 |
| High | Growing | 12 | |
| Google SERP | High | Stable | 4 |
GrowingStableDecliningProviders = tracked provider count in Sourced. | |||
| ImplementingAdding or planned additions | |||
| Source | Buyer Expectation | Demand Trend | Providers |
| LLM Conversations‡ Tracks how a cultural moment or brand gets described, summarized, and recommended inside ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude conversations. Kept as one combined source rather than split by model, since the trend signal is the answer people receive, not any single assistant. | High | Growing | 2 |
| Pinterest Pinterest's user-collection graphs surface intentional, forward-looking signal that passive scrolling platforms don't produce, which is why fashion and design-focused trend tools weight it heavily despite lower overall volume. | Medium | Growing | 7 |
| Threads AI-driven text analysis on Threads tracks how mainstream conversational syntax mutates in real time, less about topics than about how people are actually talking. | Medium | Growing | 7 |
| Twitch Live chat on Twitch generates gaming-adjacent slang and subculture references faster than almost any other platform, extracted directly from the scrolling text rather than the video itself. | Low | Growing | 4 |
| RedNote Xiaohongshu (RED) is directly named among core monitored APAC platforms, and it has become the primary database for tracking premium Asian consumer behavior around cosmetics, travel, and luxury goods. | Medium | Growing | 1 |
| Bluesky Native Bluesky listening went fully live this cycle, letting teams query sentiment and trend data directly rather than through a workaround, a genuine upgrade in capability, distinct from (and not contradicted by) softer general-consumer engagement numbers reported elsewhere. | Medium | Growing | 7 |
| Substack Substack is called out explicitly as a dedicated source built to capture hard-to-reach newsletter conversation, evidence strong enough to move it from a pilot integration to a confirmed one. | Medium | Declining | 0 |
| Podcasts Fully transcribed access now reaches roughly 150,000 English-language podcasts, purpose-built for intelligence and communications teams, and coverage separately lists more than 20,000 podcasts as a standing monitored channel, clear evidence podcast transcription has become core infrastructure rather than a niche add-on. | Medium | Growing | 2 |
| Broadcast/Radio Global television and radio transcripts are tracked natively, the same corroborating pattern seen in podcast coverage: broadcast monitoring has moved back into scope for social and cultural trend platforms after years of being treated as a separate PR discipline. | Low | Growing | 1 |
GrowingStableDecliningProviders = tracked provider count in Sourced. | |||
| InterestExploring and planning | |||
| Source | Buyer Expectation | Demand Trend | Providers |
| Douyin Douyin gets the same direct tracking treatment as Xiaohongshu, tracked specifically for short-form e-commerce mechanics and interactive trend formats that haven't fully crossed over to Western platforms yet. | Low | Stable | 0 |
| Farcaster‡ Farcaster isn't yet part of the standard trend-tracking stack. Whatever tracking exists likely runs through generic web scraping rather than a dedicated connection. | Low | Growing | 0 |
| Patreon‡ Patreon shows the same gap as Farcaster: real creator-economy relevance, but not yet a direct platform integration. | Low | Stable | 0 |
| Bilibili Bilibili is the foundational dataset for anime, gaming, and youth creator culture across mainland China, confirmed directly in core APAC platform coverage. | Low | Stable | 0 |
| Kuaishou‡ Kuaishou remains a roadmapped rather than active source, tracking rural and lower-tier Chinese consumer behavior that Douyin's more urban user base doesn't fully represent. | Low | Stable | 0 |
| Lemon8‡ Lemon8 isn't yet part of the standard trend-tracking stack, despite its real relevance to mid-market Gen Z fashion trend tracking. | Low | Growing | 0 |
| Goodreads Goodreads review activity is a reliable, if slow-moving, indicator for which books and ideas are gaining traction in mainstream intellectual conversation. | Low | Stable | 2 |
| Genius Lyric annotations on Genius track linguistic change and youth vocabulary shifts close to their point of origin, before terms migrate into broader usage. | Low | Growing | 0 |
| Steam Community‡ Steam Community forums aren't yet part of the standard trend-tracking stack, a real gap given how much PC gaming subculture discussion happens there. | Medium | Stable | 1 |
| Wattpad‡ Wattpad shows the same gap as Steam Community: genuinely predictive for youth fiction and entertainment pipeline trends, but not yet a direct platform integration. | Low | Stable | 0 |
| AO3‡ AO3 (Archive of Our Own) has a tag-cloud structure uniquely granular for mapping fandom engagement, but like the other niche platforms here, it isn't yet part of the standard tracking stack. | Low | Growing | 0 |
GrowingStableDecliningProviders = tracked provider count in Sourced. | |||
‡ Reflects Sourced's direct market assessment.
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