Multi-Platform Viral Content Tracker

Multi-Platform Viral Content Tracker

Track what's going viral on a topic across YouTube, Reddit, TikTok and Instagram in one run, returned as one normalized, ranked feed — instead of stitching together four separate scrapers with four different field shapes. Each item carries a velocity_score (engagement gained per hour since it was posted), so you see what is gaining traction right now, not just what has the highest raw count.

What it does

• YouTube — free-text topic search (e.g. "ai agents"). Returns real view counts; exact publish time is not exposed by YouTube search, so posted_at/age_hours are derived from the relative "N weeks ago" label.
• Reddit — per-subreddit (Reddit's own free-text search blocks bots, so this actor tracks named subreddits instead). Pulls a wide recent-post pool per subreddit and velocity-ranks it; because the underlying API sorts by time, not score, this surfaces "what's being posted and gaining traction now" in the subreddits you name, not a guaranteed all-time-top list.
• TikTok — hashtag topic-discovery and/or known handles. Exact post timestamps, so velocity is fully accurate here.
• Instagram — known handles only (Instagram has no public hashtag search without a login). Reads the account's recent posts/reels with exact timestamps.

Each platform runs and degrades independently — if one platform errors or a handle is unreachable, the others still return their results.

Input

Ten input fields, grouped by what feeds which platform:

Topic / account sources (leave any group empty to skip that platform):

• keywords — topics to search on YouTube, e.g. ["ai agents", "home espresso"].
• subreddits — subreddit names for Reddit, without r/, e.g. ["artificial", "singularity"].
• hashtags — TikTok hashtags for topic discovery, without #.
• tiktokHandles — TikTok accounts to track, without @.
• instagramHandles — Instagram accounts to track, without @.

Run controls:

• platforms — which of youtube / reddit / tiktok / instagram to run (default: all four).
• maxPerPlatform — items pulled per platform per topic before ranking (default 25).
• maxItems — cap on total items returned across all platforms/topics; 0 = no cap (default 0).
• sortBy — velocity_score (default), engagement, views, likes, comments, or posted_at.
• proxyConfiguration — Apify Proxy, RESIDENTIAL group prefilled. Used for YouTube, TikTok and Instagram (TikTok/Instagram reject datacenter IPs); Reddit's API needs no proxy.

Output fields

Every row, regardless of platform, is normalized to the same shape: rank, platform, content_id, url, title, author, author_url, description, posted_at, age_hours, views, likes (Reddit: upvote score), comments, engagement (sum of available interaction signals), velocity_score (engagement ÷ age in hours, age floored at 2h), thumbnail, query (the topic/handle/hashtag the item was found under), scraped_at, and platform_extra — a dict of platform-specific extras (e.g. subreddit/upvote_ratio for Reddit, duration_seconds/tags for YouTube, hashtags/share_count for TikTok, media_type/location_name for Instagram).

Ranking is computed within each platform, then results are concatenated — a YouTube view count dwarfs a Reddit score, so a single cross-platform sort would always bury Reddit. Re-sort the combined output yourself if you need a single global order.

Pricing

Pay-per-result — see the Store pricing tab for the current rate. Each ranked item returned is one charged unit.

Notes

• Reddit and YouTube quality is bounded by what each platform's public/no-auth path exposes: Reddit surfaces recent-and-rising posts in the subreddits you name (not an all-time-top list), and YouTube's likes is always None (YouTube search doesn't expose it), so YouTube engagement is effectively its view count.
• TikTok and Instagram carry exact timestamps, so their velocity_score is the most precise of the four platforms.
• This actor supplies nothing on your behalf beyond the Apify Proxy connection already built in — no external keys or accounts required to run it.