Internet trends: marketing research & predictions

2007 TrendsSpotting Trends Review

December 29th, 2007 by

trends-2007.jpg

For our 2007 Trend Review we choose few “best chosen” categories and suggested our best nominees. For those we examined “You” – writing on blogs and forums. We checked Your searches and votes and presented evidence for the trends. Our final conclusion is based on our personal insights. Our Trends 2007 tools were: search engines trends, buzz on blogs, forums, surveys, mainstream media and popular blogs. And of course – previous TrendsSpotting findings.

1. Product of the year:

The competition was lopsided numero – uno iPhone versus “No One”. Though, we were considering: Nintendo wii ,MS Xbox, playstation III, Guitar Hero. Our appetite for iPhone seems incessant Google zeitgeist suggests iPhone is the No 1 – fastest rising global and in US. Mainstream Media was voracious about apples much hyped gadget. To much of iPhones accolade Time declared it as “The invention of the year”.Blogpulse (see graph 1) suggests iPhone was indeed a news generator. However wii seems to be starring in search and in forum discussions (see graph 2) while just before Christmas wii demand skyrocketed & Nintendo’s inability to match that ,brought it much to our discussion.

iphone-wii-xbox.PNG

graph 1: blog citations: iPhone vs. wii vs. xbox (by BlogPulse)

iphone-wii-xbox-forums.PNG

graph 2: forum citations: iPhone vs. wii vs. xbox (by Omgili)

Can you believe when the initial survey indicated that only 3% were highly interested in purchasing iPhone for the price of $499 , Apple had to cut it down to $399, just 68 days after product launch?

Talys Say: iPhone will make it to history pages.
Apurbas Say: xbox.

2. Disappointment of the year:

We think the two close contestants were rumor (or news) multiplied “Google Phone” buzz versus virtual world bubble “Second Life”. While Google secret sauce Android added much to the Gphone buzz ,whereas kids & their alternative identity, “Second Life” stalled mostly due to operational issues.

For Google Phone- The seasonal peak in Google Phone searches (see graph 3) & blog citations (see graph 4) are true reflection of how quickly we lost out interest in it.

For Second Life: 2007 was the breaking point for Second Life (see graph 5 for traffic, graph 4 for blog citations).

trends-2007-sl-gphone.PNG
graph 3: Google search: second life vs. Google phone vs. android (by Google Trends) secondlife-googlephone-android.PNG
graph 4: blog citations: second life vs. google phone vs. android (by BlogPulse) secondlife-alexa.PNG
graph 5: 2007 traffic estimation for secondlife (by alexa)
Our say: Hard to say – While Google Phone brought publishers to lose faith in Google (so much discussion over nothing) Second Life holds major marketers on hold.

3. Issue of the year:

The grass looks much greener in 2007..at least Yahoo !s Top 10 environmental query suggests so. Interesting. .Global warming – is that a Global issue or was it Angela Merkel’s political agenda to G8 summit? Why only people of 3 countries are proactively demanding from their governments to take responsibility ? On the contrary “United States election” made a loud noise in almost all main stream media across the globe.

Our say: Google Trends seems much warmer on “Global warming” over “United states election” (see graph 6).

global-warming-us-elections-trend.PNG
graph 6: Google search: global warming vs. United States election (by Google Trends)

Taly’s say: Global warming – A trend with ideology which makes us better people.

Apurba’s say: Are we loosing faith in government & institutions? None of the presidential candidates [except Hillary Clinton & Obama] registered great buzz.CIA, FBI are alleged to edit Wikipedia .

4. Book of the year:
“He who lends a book is an idiot. He who returns the book is more of an idiot” –Arab Proverb.

Fun apart – 2007 we seemed enchanted by “potter mania”- on the release day itself Harry Potter was hot not less than iPhone

It would be a fallacy to compare Harry Potter’s 7th book [25-30 M sold & most talked in Shelfari ] with other notable Amazon Best sellers specially Elizabeth Gilbert’s travel memoir “Eat ,Pray ,Love” [ 4 M sold]. It created outstanding online buzz post the Oprah Winfrey Show featured author Gilbert on two episodes on Oct 2007.

See Harry Potter versus Amazon Best seller (graph 7 – blog citations, graph 8 – forum discussions)

harry-potter-trends-2007.PNG

graph 7: blog citations: Harry Potter vs. Eat Pray Love (by BlogPulse)

harry-potter-trends-forum-2007.PNG

graph 8: forum discussions: Harry Potter vs. Eat Pray Love (by Omgili)

Our say: no match!

5. Band of the year:

Some naughty searched forMusic Is My Boyfriend ..lol. Wondering what’s in her head ..Radiohead?
Even a cursory look into Ask Top searches & Google zeitgeist would suggest Music & videos has become an integral part of our daily lives.
While Radiohead rewrote the rules of music industry by web only distribution & “Name your price” for their new album In Rainbows , whereas the surviving members of legendary rock group Led Zeppelin rocked music lovers with a surprise comeback.

However Google Trends seems to have nod its head in favor of Radiohead so are the innumerous blog citations [overstatement !!ok..39,577 Technorati results to be little specific ]& the chartbuster at Lastfm.Talys Say: Radihead for sharing 2.0.
Apurbas Say: Of course Radiohead. Wasn’t that anyway our takeaway from DRM free iTune growth.

6. Social Website of the year:

Check your vitals ..you never know when an Identity Crash awaits you as Facebook Surprise .
Our world seems have obsessed with Facebook & MySpace. Google trends suggest MySpace as the winner with Facebook catching up almost at meteorites pace [did you know Facebook overcomes MySpace in the UK and Canada?] so are the blog citations.

Vox populi declared Facebook as winner of social networking at Webbys .Its again Facebook [over MySpace] nominated for the company of the year in AOL Best and Worst 2007.

facebook-myspace-trends-2007.PNG

graph 9: Google search: Facebook vs. Myspace (by Google Trends).
facebook-myspace-blogs-2007.PNG

graph 10: blog citations: Facebook vs. Myspace (by BlogPulse).

Taly’s Say: MySpace- only for not blinking when Facebook came rising up so fast.
Apurba’s Say: Love it or hate it.. its Facebook .Going by stats

  • The youngest accounts for a disproportionate amount of the traffic on MySpace and Facebook–and they don’t favor either brand.
  • Dual Facebook /MySpace users spent 26 % more time on Facebook (93 minutes per month ) – than did the average Facebook-only users (74 minutes).

7. Country of the year :
The flutter of a butterfly’s wings in China could, in fact, actually effect weather patterns in New York City, thousands of miles away : The Butterfly Effect

Remembering that Japan, the leading country to blog (!) and the one to promise a replacement for the internet , be it Japan’s Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda’s recent visit to china or 2008 Beijing Olympics or its burgeoning internet population that will soon overtake US ,the Asian dragon seems fiery. The United states ,China , and Japan are the 3 top guns in today’s internet graph (see graph). Going by blog citations our discussions seemed real hot.

top-countries-internet.PNG

graph 11: Top countries in internet useage (by internetworldstats)

top-countries-trends-2007.PNG

graph 12: blog citations: United States vs. Japan vs. China (by BlogPulse)

Our say: No doubt Asian giants are roaring up take the United States bull by horn.

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post Post to Plurk Plurk This Post Post to Yahoo Buzz Buzz This Post Post to Delicious Delicious Post to Digg Digg This Post Post to Ping.fm Ping This Post Post to Reddit Reddit Post to StumbleUpon Stumble This Post

6 Responses

  1. Yoav Pridor Says:

    If you want to use Omgili Graphs for a longer time frame (Last year, Last 6 Months…), it is possible. Please contact me by return mail and we’ll make the tool accessible to you (at no cost).

    Happy New Year,

    Yoav

  2. count Says:

    good analysis. What about 2008?

  3. Gaurav Says:

    “Our say: Google Trends seems much warmer on “Global warming” over “United states election” (see graph 6).”

    I think this is not a correct comparison. I find it highly unlikely for people in USA to search for “United states election”. The fact that Internet is US centric, IMO users would be searching for “Elections” or “Presidential Elections”

    http://www.google.com/trends?q=presidential+elections,+global+warming&geo=usa&sa=N

    What do you think?

  4. talyweiss Says:

    Thank you Gaurav. You are right – Americans searching on “Presidential Elections” would not use “United States” on their search. Though – we are dealing here with a potentially global issue, searched also by those outside the States. Either way – it is amazing that in the same link you added- The trend for “Global Warming” is still much stronger than the one for “Presidential Elections”. Any way you look into it – Global Warming seems much warmer.. It will be interesting to follow these trends compete as the elections are coming near.

  5. Gregg Says:

    hi. what do you think about future of this site?http://hottrendsreview.com/
    it’s agregate news site but based on top seraches from google trends?

  6. Maryann Says:

    hey there and thanks to your info – I have certainly picked up anything new from proper here. I did however experience some technical points using this site, as I experienced to reload the web site a lot of occasions previous to I may get it to load properly. I were puzzling over if your web hosting is OK? No longer that I am complaining, however sluggish loading instances instances will often affect your placement in google and could damage your high-quality score if advertising and ***********|advertising|advertising|advertising and *********** with Adwords. Well I’m including this RSS to my email and could glance out for a lot more of your respective fascinating content. Ensure that you replace this again soon..

Leave a Comment

Please note: Comment moderation is enabled and may delay your comment. There is no need to resubmit your comment.

Real Time Web Analytics