FastCompany Magazine

smarterplanet:

Separating fads from trends, 2012
Another groundbreaking
innovation of the last 20 year

You’re browsing your Facebook feed when you notice that something is…off. Instead of the usual teenage drama, you notice your younger cousins are posting an awful lot about doughnuts these days. Different doughnut flavors, doughnut related clothing and, worst of all, maybe getting a tattoo of a doughnut. Are you really that out of the loop? When did doughnuts become the new cupcakes?

All this chatter would be pretty trivial, if it weren’t for US IBM Patent No. 8,200,477 which lets companies like bakeries analyze petabytes of data from tweets, Facebook posts, and Pinterest comments to get a holistic view of the conversations within the noise. That way, different retailers and companies can see trends before they happen so they can plan and adjust accordingly. And hopefully for you, pie doesn’t replace doughnuts as the hot dessert of 2013, ‘cause you really can’t justify any more trendy calories.

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