Internet trend spotting questions

I got an email from a journalism student at Columbia University asking me to answer some questions. I replied that he could phone me, but if I did it on my blog, I could probably take the time to write, and he said “go ahead” -

My name is Tim Chan and I’m a reporter out of Columbia University’s
journalism school.

 I’m currently working on a full-length magazine article about internet
 trend-spotting blogs/ventures, coolhunting.com and thrillist.com, and
 I was hoping to ask you for your expert opinion.

 I really respect your extensive experience and expertise and it would
 be great if you could help me out. I think you present an interesting
 perspective as you not only do consulting but you also run a blog
 yourself.  Would you be able to provide me with a few short answers to the
 following?:

 1. Whereas trend-spotting used to be reserved for print publications
 (ie. magazines, companies that publish trend reports, etc.), we have seen a
 shift to the internet. Is this a viable internet venture?
 What are some of the barriers to entry? What are the pros and cons?

Absolutely a viable venture. The only barriers are the time it takes to develop quality content. Somepros are that readers can get up to date information with a click of the mouse, and in many cases, find interactive resources like forums and blogs. Some cons are that they may have to wade through the search engine spam to find exactly what they want but that’s improving.

 2. Are these sites a threat to traditional trend-spotting firms that
 use print and also charge money for their findings?

I would certainly think so, but then again, many businesses won’t have the time to do the research themselves, so will continue to hire firms. Also, many of these firms will be using these same sites for research too.

 3. In light of the dot.com bust from a few years ago, how “safe”
 are  these  ventures today? What is the possibility of failure?

The most successful ventures will be very in very targeted niches, and since there’s no huge capital investment, the safety factor really doesn’t seem to matter.  The possibility of failure is virtually non existent if you deliver well targeted quality content that people want to read, share and talk about. The only way to “fail” is by not doing it well, with inferior writing, poor site organization etc.

 4. How is success measured with these sites? The # of hits and
 visitors? Ad revenue?

Success is defined differently by different people. To some may be to make money selling ads. To another, it may be to get high number of visitors, with revenue being generated only through sales of products. Still others may just want traffic and notoriety.

 5. In terms of numbers, what would be considered a high number of
 visitors for a site like coolhunting.com? 10,000 a month? 50,000?
 100,000? More?

Boy that’s a tough one. I personally consider 10,000 a month to be “substantial traffic”, but it’s all relative to the subject. If you’re selling ads, the more traffic you get the better, obviously. Alexa.com will give some rough traffic figures on websites that are large enough.

 6. I have encountered much debate over the use of terms like “# of
 hits” vs. “# of visitors” vs. “# of subscribers.” How do you
 differentiate between the three?

Hits are worthless to measure. One page view can show several “hits” counting each image in the stats. That said, many people erroneously refer to their own site visitors as hits”, and not literally looking at the “hits” column in their site statistics.

“Unique visitors” are different  people that came to the site, which to me are an important number to watch.

Page views, tell you the average number of pages your visitors are going to on each trip to your site.

 Subscribers are people that have signed up for your list, or givaway, newsletter etc, and are very valuable.

 7. Have you heard of coolhunting.com and thrillist.com? If so, what
 are your thoughts on their content and long term prospects?

I admint I’d not been to either site. I’m particularly impressed with Thrillist though. Smaller targeted niches like this develop good followings with lots of inbound links occuring naturally if they have quality content. The site will snowball and continue t ogrow asd long as they keep writing. Setting up a community site like that for a geographic area or specific subject is one way to be very successful.

 And finally… (sorry to be long-winded!)

 8. How does this shift of trend-spotting online affect us, the
 everyday observer? Why should we pay attention to this? What can we
 learn from this?

It only means we have more options for more information at our fingertips, but we need to filter what we read. Remember, anyone can make a website or blog that says anything, and that doesn’t make it true.

 Thanks so much in advance for your help Scott. I really appreciate it
 and look forward to your responses.

 This article will be freelanced to local and mainstream publications.

 If there is anyone else who you think I should be talking to, please
 let me know.
 Please weigh in on this and help out Tim…