Been curating viral product boxes for a while now and here's the pattern I keep seeing: by the time a product hits your For You Page with 2M+ likes, the smart money already ordered it 2 weeks ago and is reselling the hype.

A few signals that actually predict a product going viral, before it saturates:

1. Comment velocity, not like count. A video with 50k likes but 3k+ comments asking "link??" is a stronger signal than one with 500k likes and barely any comments. Comments = purchase intent.

1. Cross-platform overlap. If the same product is showing up on TikTok Shop AND Instagram Reels AND getting Amazon review spikes in the same week, that's not a coincidence — that's a real trend, not a bot-farmed one.

1. Problem-first framing beats product-first. Products marketed as solving a dumb annoying problem ("this stopped my earbuds from falling out during runs") outperform products marketed on features. Virality follows relatability, not specs.

1. Price anchoring under $40. Almost every viral impulse-buy product sits under the $40 mark. Above that, conversion drops off a cliff regardless of how viral the content is.

I built Trendloot around this — we scout using these exact signals so members get products before they're oversaturated, not after. Figured this might be useful for anyone else selling or shopping trend-driven products.