Social trends are always of interest to advertisers and businesses. For domainers, social trends also provide opportunities to be ahead of the game and snap up names that may appeal to future human behavior.
Cocooning
Cocooning is a term that was coined to describe people increasing interest in services that do not require them to leave home. Mail order, online shopping and home entertainment have benefited enormously from this trend. Perhaps the most remarkable shift has been in videos. Major video chains have now shifted to providing their videos by mail order with visits to their shops optional or often unnecessary.
What other social trends might be significant?
The Yeppies
The Yeppies are Young Experimenting Perfection-seekers and are today’s school leavers and graduates. They are searching for a very ill-defined fulfillment. This results in restless job-hopping. JobHop.com and JobHopper.com are both taken but for those looking for domain names for job seekers, this trend should inspire some ideas.
Down-Shifting jobs
Another trend for Yeppies is that they expect to push as hard as possible into a job until their 30s reaching “burn-out” and then “down-shifting” to lower pressure jobs. LowPressureJobs.com is available. Something catering to this age groups search for low pressure and perhaps socially interesting jobs will likely be in demand. “Over half of all job changes occur before the age of 30, and a quarter before the age of 20. ”
Serial Monogamy
As our life span increases, serial relationships are much more common with increased rates of divorce, remarriage and cohabitation. Much “mate-shopping” goes on and people are waiting much longer to get married sometimes called the “Peter Pan syndrome”. The idea of having a “starter marriage” is much more common. Whether this is “commitophobia” or a reluctance to settle for less than perfect relationships has yet to be seen. Commitophobia.com is available and might make a fun dating site to appeal to the Yeppies.
Life-Shopping
“It might help young people to see that ‘life-shopping’ – shopping for the right further-education course, gap-year activity, job, career, partner, friends, home, lifestyle – is in many ways very similar to shopping for the right shoes, holiday, laptop or mobile phone.” While LifeShopping.com is taken, the idea is that this age group are a perfect marketing group that are willing to shop around for the life style they want.
Socialization
Socialization for Yeppies also involves finding like-minded people and the Internet is now providing ways to do that with social networking sites becoming very popular. This “tribalism” online is likely to continue and develop. The Second life network is providing ways to socialize in a 3D environment as does online multiuser gaming networks. Social sites have been going for branding rather than generic domain names, making this a much harder place for the predictive domainer.
Monitoring social trends is a worthwhile exercise for the domainer just as much as it is for companies and advertising. Tapping into advertising research where available may well help domainers spot opportunities. There is a lot of competition in this area so search thoroughly and as always buyer beware.
{ 0 comments… add one now }