Google Trends does a good job and there is a roundabout way of programmatically getting that data. Twitter has trends but needs location to work. I was wondering if there are any APIs that can surface this information? Ideally looking at a 24 hour day, useful to have trends based on keywords, facebook trends and twitter hashtags
I only know topsy.com, never used their api but they're twitter's only valid partner on trends and stats etc. <a href="http://about.topsy.com/support/api/" rel="nofollow">http://about.topsy.com/support/api/</a> i hope it helps.
Trendspottr. They were the first major player in this space I could remember. Their API can be found here <a href="https://trendspottr.com/api/" rel="nofollow">https://trendspottr.com/api/</a>
Perhaps <a href="http://buzzsumo.com" rel="nofollow">http://buzzsumo.com</a> might do what you're after? Their plan that includes the API is expensive if you just want to play around with it.