My friend Patrick sent me a link to the Springwise idea database. According to this research service's editors and 8,000 trendspotters, the next big things for 2007 include creative destruction in the eco-ecosystem, curated consumption of snobmoddities, life caching in the experience economy... And believe it or not, some of these concepts might be applicable to web hosting.
Example #1: The Eco-ecosystem:
Springwise offers UK-based Ecoinsurance as a case study. The company sells car insurance, which is no less of a price-driven commodity than web hosting. But its packages include carbon offsets for 20% of your vehicle's CO2 emissions. Rackspace UK already offers cleaner conscience with carbon neutral web hosting. If you're an ecommerce hosting provider, you can capitalize on retailers' desire to appear eco-friendly by offering a "Green Stores" icon and a "Green Commerce" directory of participating customers.
Example #2: Experience Economy/Life Caching:
Springwise says consumers are increasing interested in purchasing not just products and services, but experiences. For instance, Dinner in the Sky differentiates itself from the crowded restaurant market by serving fancy meals 50 meters in the air.
In addition to living exotic experiences, Springwise says customers want to save and share them - hence the popularity of Flickr and YouTube. So might there be partnership opportunities for hosting providers in the travel industry? For instance, once you sign up for a safari or cruise, the tour operator could welcome you with 10 GB of space on its travel portal (and perhaps domain registering/forwarding to your profile?), where you could post cell phone photos during your trip, upload videos upon your return, and share content with other customers.
Example #3: Upgradia and Snobmoddities
Forget Ben & Jerry's; Wine Cellar Sorbet offers 7 vintages for refined dessert eaters. And goodbye Tide; the Landress sells $19 detergents in dainty bottles. Springwise says today's consumers are looking for innovative twists on everyday commodities - even web hosting. I'm not sure how one can dress up bandwidth and disk space, but what about limited edition designer site builder templates? Wired recently reported that the ancient Indian art of vastu shastra can allegedly be applied to increase website traffic. Might there be a market for pre-vastu-ed site layouts?
The bottom line is, I think hosting providers need to work harder to keep up with the level of creativity in the consumer world. Don't you?
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