About
I teach sociology and global studies at a large Midwestern community college. I am a French expat.
I am a human rights activist, partner of conscience with Amnesty International, the sponsor of 7 girls around the world with Children International, a contributor to Planned Parenthood, and a Kiva microlender.
April 1st, 2010 at 8:16 am
My name is Ryan Geyer and I graduated from Texas A&M in 2008 with a B.S. in Sociology.
I would like to introduce a website that I have just launched that has turned out to have, what I believe, profound sociological implications. I titled the subject of this email “Sociology Project” because I believe this site has great potential sociologically.
The site is http://trenspot.com
We take the top ten trending topics from the web’s most popular news and social media sites and put it in one place. Not only do we put all the top trends in one place, we identify matching trends across theses sites. The red dots that you will see delineate the topics that have been hot across the various sites.
Sociologically it has been very interesting. As we have been wading through the reformation of our health care system, subjects that have to do with pop culture are seemingly just as important to people visiting the sites that we poll. For example, Tiger Woods and Jesse James have garnered as much attention on trenspot with their infidelity as last week’s historic legislation.
It’s also interesting to watch the important topics throughout ebb and flow as the day progresses. For instance, sites with a strong appeal to teenagers (Twitter, YouTube, and Viral Video Chart) tend to be more active in the afternoon, suggesting a higher rate of teenage usage. This immediately draws my attention to the fact that kids get out of school and instantly begin to tweet and watch youtube videos concerning topics of pop culture. It has been interesting to watch.
As a student of sociology I have been very interested in what we are seeing throughout the day. It has also been interesting to see which stories make the top ten lists for CNN vs. Fox News vs. the Wall Street Journal, etc.
We are young and moving quickly. The niche that we have found is that we are a website of popular news. We are not breaking news; we’re popular news and that is what gives us the ability to see what people find important or interesting.
I appreciate your time. My contact info is below and I’d be excited to hear any feedback or suggestions that you may have.
Respectfully,
Ryan Geyer
Email: rgeyer@trenspot.com
Twitter: twitter.com/trenspot