Approaches are provided for collecting and distributing topical data. An approach includes collecting topical data from one or more mobile applications on a mobile device. The topical data describes areas of interest of a user based on a way in which the one or more mobile applications are used by the user. The approach further includes normalizing the collected topical data into a list of topics of interest for the user. The approach further includes tagging each topic of interest with a non-hierarchical keyword or term. The approach further includes sending the list of tagged topics of interest to one or more remote servers.