Trend score, opportunity and lifecycle stages

Trend score (0–100) measures how fast a topic is rising compared with its own baseline. It combines attention growth (Wikipedia views), coverage growth (news, papers, stories, podcasts, niche headlines), how many independent sources are rising at once, whether growth is speeding up, and how recently the topic appeared. Topics that are already heavily covered lose points for saturation.

Opportunity score (0–100) estimates where the gap is for creators: trend × (1 − saturation) × stage weight × niche relevance. Early stages score highest.

Lifecycle stages:

• Emerging: an early rise from a low base, recently detected.
• Exploding: rising in at least two sources with strong week-over-week growth.
• Viral: very high volume and no longer speeding up.
• Saturated: high volume for a long time, flat or falling.
• Declining: falling for several days in a row.
• Steady: none of the above.

Confidence rises with the number of sources, data completeness and history length. Low-confidence topics are labelled "Early signal"; very new topics are labelled "New topic, limited history".

Every score opens a breakdown of plus and minus lines, such as "Wikipedia views up 4.1× against its 4-week median". We say a topic is rising and show the evidence. We never claim a topic will go viral.