13. The system of claim 11 wherein the word parser is further operable to split the receiving data stream at word boundaries.
11. A system for discovering story trends, the system comprising: a plurality of client devices and a plurality of data sources coupled to a network; a web server operative to receive a fixed size data stream to and from the client devices and data sources; a word parser operative to receive a data stream, identify a first set of words within the data stream and determine which words in the first set of words are present in a word cache and updating the word cache based on the determination of which words in the first set of words are present in the word cache a subword parser operative to identify a second set of words within the data stream for each word present within the word cache and determine which words in the second set of words are present in a subword cache, updating the subword cache based on the determination of which words in the second set of words are present in the subword cache and identifying a third set of words based on the determination of which words in the second set of words are present in the subword cache, the subword cache including a pruned subset of the word cache based on one or more textual metrics; a hash calculator operative to determine at least one story trend associated with the third set of words and generate a story hash associated with the third set of words; a story trend cache operable to store the story hash and update the story trend cache according to the story hash; and a hamming calculator operable to retrieve one or more popular story topics according to the story trend cache.