Every day a new social network is born and yet another dies. This makes spotting digital trends and tracking them to be challenging at times. However, I have found a system that works really well called Open Files. It was developed by George Stalk at the Boston Consulting Group (an Edelman client). It's become the framework for my latest talk, which I have been giving around the world.
Stalk tracks trends by breaking them down into three distinct buckets - faint signals that are here and now trends with real consumer movement and business models, a watch list - new directions that are emerging but may not be ready for primetime, and hallucinations, flashes that, if you squint, might vanish.
You can read a description of the nine big trends in my Open Files and peruse my deck over on Authentcities, the Edelman Digital blog. The trends include:
Faint Signals: The Cut and Paste Web, The Attention Crash, Digital Curators, Super Crunching and Collaboration
Watch List: Living Room 2.0. and Geek Markterers
Hallucinations: Digital Nomads and Data Leaking
