Trending is when a topic, hashtag, or keyword becomes popular and receives more visibility than usual on a social media platform like Twitter or TikTok. These trends are determined by each platform’s algorithm that examines the interests, discussions, and collective attention of a community at a given time. Trends can come from current events, viral content, holidays, or online campaigns and challenges.

Trends are often short-lived and can fluctuate, but they reflect what a community is interested in at a moment. They can also be influenced by outside sources, like celebrities or news organizations that produce and promote specific topics. In addition, there are companies that analyze trends to forecast what the future holds. Pantone, for example, is a company that creates a color of the year each year and distills information about colors into reports for the public.

People are naturally drawn to trends because they offer a sense of belonging. A trend gives you an in-group that you can feel a part of, much like when you wear a certain style of clothing or eat a certain dish. A trend can be a new idea, a fashion statement, or a lifestyle choice that everyone seems to embrace at once.

If you’re a marketer, trending can be a way to get your content in front of lots of people quickly and easily. But, you have to know a few things about trends before you jump on the bandwagon. Trends are often based on volume, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they have to be a sharp spike. As an article from the Washington Post explains, platforms like Twitter look at the time it takes for the volume of a topic to grow and determine whether it’s trending. That means that if a hashtag starts trending one day and then goes off the radar for 30 days, it won’t stay on the trending list.

Another factor that influences whether a hashtag will trend is how many times it’s used and where the growth in popularity is coming from. For example, if someone uses a hashtag on their own and others use it in the same conversation, the hashtag will have less chance of becoming a trend because it’s not getting shared broadly enough. It can also be impacted by other factors, such as whether it’s competing with other trends or other events, like when a national tragedy happens and there are similar hashtags on the same event.

YouTube’s Trending results are largely driven by how many views a video gets and where those views come from. However, the algorithms that decide which videos appear in the section are complex. Executives at YouTube have said that they’re careful about what videos end up on the Trending list, ensuring that they don’t contain profanity or inappropriate content. But, creators have complained that they’re often overlooked for the section while traditional media is included frequently.

Some creators even argue that the trending algorithms are biased against them because of their edgy content, which can scare off advertisers. As a result, they have urged YouTube to be more inclusive with creators on the Trending page and push for better policies around brand safety.