Cool-hunting on the web becoming ever so popular.

We all know and like „cool hunting“ blogs like BoingBoing and coolhunting.com. But since recently, companies rely on these sources, as TheAge writes.

blog-watching and mining is big business and companies such as Nielsen BuzzMetrics and Cymfony have developed software to sift through and interpret the millions of voices talking in social network sites […] their software can help „process technology with expert analysis to identify the people, issues and trends impacting your business

A trend derived from true „streethunters“:

the concept of „cool-hunting“ evolved in the early 1990s and refers to a new breed of forecasters who spot trends and add their interpretation to developments in fashion and culture.

Only nowadays many trends are taken from (influential) bloggers:

innovation based on trend information is a hot topic. „We get virtually all of our ‚big spottings‘ – consumer behaviour-changing ideas, concepts, big-picture thinking – from blogs written by smart business thinkers such as Jeff Jarvis (http://buzzmachine.com) and Seth Godin (http://www.sethgodin.com),“ he says.

Which is smart, in a way. Why not tap into the vast network of people who aggregate information for you? You just have to decide which aggregators to listen to (because there are too many to listen to them all!). Further on it says:

Before the internet, a designer would have had to buy hundreds of magazines to keep in touch with what was happening in design around the world. Today they just take a look at 20 or so blogs each day and get the best information anyone can get

Combine that with an RSS tool, and your well set up…

Interestingly, many companies are starting software to even do the ground work:

A combination of technology and human analysis helps blog-watchers to spot a new trend or marketable product. At a cost of $US30,000 to $US100,000 ($A40,000 to $A133,000) a year, they use technologies known as „natural language processing“ and „unstructured data mining“ to unscramble the often ungrammatical writing and slang found in the estimated 100 million blogs worldwide.