Ever wanted to know what makes your customers tick? What their inner-secrets are? Ever wanted to get so close, you wanted to know what they were looking at right now – even what they carried in their bags to work each day?
Maybe you even thought about hiring a trend spotter?!
No need to waste money on stuff like that! Now Flickr does all the hard work for you! You just sit back with a glass of brandy in hand and dig deep in folk’s personal lives with the following Flickr tags:
Whats In Your Bag (and What’s In Your Bag)
Desktop Show And Tell
Related PSFK Articles
PSFK Cool Hunt Competition on Flickr!!
2005 Trends: The Death Of Trend Spotting
via Lifehacker / Img via Inti
Facebook
Twitter
Digg
Reddit
StumbleUpon
How does this kill trend spotting? You have no idea who this person is. You know nothing that could tie a trend to a group. This could be a powerful tool for product suggestion, much like xanga uses. But trend spotters still have their jobs.
Daniel
March 24th, 2005 at 2:09 pm
Daniel,
I think by the tone of the piece, there’s a little tongue in cheek there, no?
But there is a serious point here – and that’s the power of these new tools on the web to reach into peoples lives in ways even trend spotters haven;t before.
Next week – you’ll see us try to run an idea that takes advantage of Flickr – just for the hell of it. Keep an eye out.
March 25th, 2005 at 11:32 am
I’ll keep my eyes open.
March 27th, 2005 at 2:03 pm
Hey whats going on – i think trendspotters will be around for ever! although i think whats trendy these dasy is to spot your own trends i think everyone is slightly unique n chic!
Check out http://www.wooch.co.uk i love it
August 9th, 2005 at 6:32 am
check out http://www.wooch.co.uk – if your trend spotting its the place to be i love there ceci tokyo tunics –
August 28th, 2005 at 9:08 am
Surely the job of the ’strategic trendspotter’ is to not only ’spot’ what is on the edge, but to interpret its revelence. There’s a lot of interesting stuff out there for the novice to spot, but the trendspotter has the added skill of being able to make sense of the zeitgeist. Trendspotters work with brands and agencies to help translate their insights into meaningful recommendations that help move brands forward. Flickr is a fanstastic bank of visual knowledge, but it still requires filtering. Only those, (the true trendspotter), that can filter the good from the bad and make meaningful connections between ideas seemingly unconnected, reap the true benefits of Flickr.
Flickr or no Flickr, observant,clever thinkers will always be in demand.
August 29th, 2005 at 10:48 am
I agree with you that you need to “filter the good from the bad and make meaningful connections between ideas seemingly unconnected, reap the true benefits of Flickr.” However, what our digital world allows is the democratization of trend spotting – no longer can overpaid trend spotters keep their pseudo-art at arms lengths from agencies and brands – the information is out there for everyone to interpret. Professional Trend Spotters need to redfine themselves as the folk who dig harder and make the right strategic interpredation of the data available.
August 29th, 2005 at 12:51 pm
Piers, I agree you. I am all pro the democratization of arts & culture. Flickr & Typepad, amongst others, are amazingly liberating tools that have given a voice to the masses. But like everything in life, only the best succeed, so, yes, professional trendspotters now have to try harder just to prove their worth. There’s nothing like a bit of competition is there?
August 29th, 2005 at 1:10 pm