Googling the Future

A number of online tools other than Google provide helpful services that replicate information now offered by the intelligence industry. Technorati aggregates information on blogs. Last.fm provides metrics for music. Even simple services like Google News can steal business from a hapless trend forecaster, since it enables anyone, anywhere, to discover new trends bubbling to the surface in, say, Stockholm.

Of course, what may be a threat to some is a resource to others. "What would we do without Google?" says Irma Zandl, president of the Zandl Group. She refers to the pre-Internet period as B.G., or "Before Google," and calls them "the bleak, dark times." Today, she finds that being able to instantly access data behind emerging trends from Istanbul to Idaho via Google is a boon to her business. "Normally clients want new things, but they want some backing, some sense of where we are now," she says. That means that although she may already have known about the decline of hip-hop, with indie rock rising in its place, Google Trends provided aggregated search info to prove the point to clients.

Besides, there's still plenty of interpretation to be done, even when using a sophisticated program like Google Insights for Search. Typing in "R&B" instead of "hip-hop" yields entirely different results; forecasters, in other words, need to know not just what to look for, but how to look for it. And the best forecasters are looking for trends that are many years in the making, and which may still be too fringe to register as more than a drop in Google's ocean of information. Thus, although it will cause pain for some, the trend industry will likely adapt to the new era of information overload. For eternal questions like which shade of pink will become the new black, Google will be just another weapon in the forecasters' arsenal.

© 2009