IT Milk: entry

There is a free, detailed report on TrendWatching.com about trends to watch out for in 2008. The author outlines 8 new trends that should be attractive targets for entrepreneurs in the near future, and here is a quick summary of each:

1. Status Sphere: Status is not just a measure of how much money you have. There are a variety of different spheres where people compete for recognition like the pimp factor of your character on World of Warcraft or the number of friends you have on Facebook.
2. Premiumization: Companies are rolling out premium versions of everything, including honey, bottled water, and marshmallows.
3. Snack Culture: This just refers to our increasing dependency on instant gratification (fast and cheap) for everything including news, fashion, and dating.
4. Online Oxygen: Like oxygen, we now need to have access to the internet at every given moment to function properly.
5. Brand Butlers: In a relevant setting where there is a need, offer a sample of your product and consumers will keep coming back for more. This past weekend in NYC, I saw an excellent example of this in the free public bathrooms by Charmin in Times Square.
6. Crowd Mining: Let the crowd solve your problem.
7. Make It Yourself: Self explanatory.
8. Eco-Iconic: Being eco-friendly is the cool thing to do now.

As far as making money online goes, the Snack Culture trend can be recreated over and over again in different niches. Find a niche that is considered a saturated market, because that is an area that is screaming and thirsty for innovation. You can take a concept that already exists and re-package it to deliver the service or information quicker and easier. An example is Pandora by the Music Genome Project, which delivers free streaming music based on what you like or dislike.

Read the TrendWatching.com 2008 Report