Dutch social network Hyves lets you sort your friends into groups. You can make a maximum of 7 groups, of which 'family' and 'business' are set. You can use these groups to send a message to part of your friends with one click, for example. Or place a 'WhoWhatWhere' which not all your friends are allowed to see. No one can see who's in which group. In future you'll also be able to use friends groups for other parts, such as photos.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

The amount of friends is becoming less important as a status symbol; the amount of contact moments you have and the depth of them, how social you are, that’ll be a lot more important. Currently you have to sort your friends groups automatically, but later social coaching brands will start to give you advice: “Does Marijke, your colleague from work with whom you exchange only business notes, really see all this personal stuff?” That’s how social coaching brands will understand your private life ever better. This is a start.

Related trends

• Coaching brands

Looki, a new Dutch travelling site, lets you look through all vacations of travelling agents you can actually book. The offer of the biggest travelling agencies in the Netherlands have been recorded in Looki. You'll find at least: Oad, TUI, Thomas Cook, Sundio, Jiba, Sudtours, GOGO and Pharosreizen. In total there are over 50 travelling agents recorded on Looki.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

During the creation of (travel) coaching brands, in 2007, 2008, 2009 and years afterwards, it’ll be about: completeness in the category. Put everything together first. Currently maybe the Dutch offer, but later it’ll be about all the offers around the world, and then worded in the language you speak. This is another step in that direction.

On Offbeatguides.com you can make a personalised, printed travelling guide, specifically for your upcoming vacation. You can, for example:

• adapt the currency to your own (based on the course at the moment of departure)


• the travelling date so that it only shows events happening while you're there


• the destination, which adapts information on the climate to the location and the current weather predictions.


• the hotel, which shows walking routes from the hotel, etc.


• you can add and remove chapters

The travelling guide has your name printed on it. Nice to have, but especially nice to give.
You can order a hardcopy for $dollar or a PDF for $10.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Everything tailored, so information too. Currently on the most obvious means, but later we’ll have a thin piece of e-paper in our backpack that shows us information of the area we’re walkig in, appreciation for tourist attractions and ratings of friends by restaurants we pass. Written or audial through our ear piece as answer to the question we ask. Even easier.

Related trends

• Coaching brands

Travelsite Travelta now has a location-based hotel seeker for mobile phones with which users can find and reserve hotels in their area using GPS or Cell-ID location. Beside that the site also shows up-to-date information on which type of rooms are available, check-in and check-out times, hotel photos and how many stars the hotel has. The user can then reserve a room through an (inter)national phone number.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

We’re mapping out the whole world and show it on Internet. Through desk and laptop, but also through our mobile phones. Everything we find on the internet we’ll also find on the mobile phone. Later, in whichever city you walk in, you can always ask Travelta whether there’s a hotel room which you can reserve for the night available.

Related trends

• Coaching brands

Doctor have managed to let the blind see (something) again. Linda Moorfoot, blind for over ten years, can see her granddaughter dance again. This thanks to an implant to the eye ball. The miniscule weight of the camera lets it move with the eye's movements. The images are vague as of yet, she sees an image built up of 16 large black and white blocks and reading or facial recognition is still out, but newer versions are already on the way with over 1000 blocks (pixels) which should enable facial recognition.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Later we’ll be able to repair all accidents and flaws in nature. This’ll unburden health care and daily support immensely. Blind that can walk by themselves? You won’t need a guide-dog anymore.

Using Flu Trends, Google predicts the spread of the flu. Google's researchers have discovered that there's a relationship between people who have the flu and who search for flu-related words. From their own research it shows that there are more flu-related queries during the flu season. The movement of this trend

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

We’ll be shown everything that’s been recorded about us. Currently as a nice gesture, but later it’ll be recorded in the law. In a next step we can give others access, so that, for example, a garage can keep the maintenance book up-to-date online and can have the car pass the inspection immediately. Or can connect to the car, for example to install the latest software update of the navigation software. Or we can transfer the car from the sale. And of course that can also be done mobile, so that we take care of this standing by the car. It’s all heading in that direction.

Related trends

• Network economy

Social network MySpace is working together with video content producer Endemol on a new show in which the social network organises the preparations for a wedding. The social reality show will count 13 episodes and is called 'Get Married on MySpace'.

Different couples can sign up, and the network will vote for their favourite couple. It doesn't stop there, however: the network can –- after selecting their favourite couple -- make the most important decisions. The dress, the wedding location, everything is decided by the MySpace-visitor.

The last episode will be devoted to the wedding ceremony and can be watched live on MySpace.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Social coaching brands are looking for added value that fits with their future function: bringing and keeping people together. So not selling music, vacation reviews or gadgets, but focusing solely on maintaining relationships. This exactly fits in this completely.

Related trends

• Coaching brands

Facebook is now available on the Xperia™ X1 phone of Sony Ericsson. On this photos of your friends will integrate on the desktop of your phone (standby-screen), you can see their latest status changes if you touch the pictures and you get more options if you touch them again, including calling them. Furthermore you can quickly upload photos to Facebook. The Facebook panels can be downloaded for free using the built-in download function of the smartphone or from the Sony Ericsson website (choose 'Panels')

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Personal media connects to what’s closest to people: friends, family, warm relationships. Currently it’s useful to call with 1 click, but later on you can say that you’d like to be called only by friends, or by friends of friends. That brands still want to call too, that’s their problem. All brands we trust get a separate rule and can call us on occasion. And brands like Facebook, social coaching brands in the making, are at the gate to remove their unwanted behaviour (permanently). It won’t be long now.

Related trends

• Coaching brands

Xobni is an Outlook-plugin that displays a lot of information in an extra right hand column. It can display contact information (including, for example, one's Skype address), link to profiles on social networks, statistics of the communication with individual contacts (amount of emails to this person in the past day/week/month) and how this person scores compared to others, related contacts (based on ccs) and ongoing conversations. Xobni gets the contact information from the email signatures. If you want to look up someone and you type an 'a' then Xobni will immediately look up 'Adam', a person you have a lot of contact with. Tip: Boris Toet

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

And this shows us how social coaching brands are slowly developing. Where first we made just a list of friends, now we’ll start to differentiate between friends, between contacts. Xobni helps us to analyse them. So that when we call ‘Call William’ in the car, it’s immediately clear which William you mean, even though you have five listed in Outlook. This kind of functionality will be taken over by all social network and communication tools.

Eventually we’ll choose one brand that watches all our contacts for us across all social networks. And which will help us maintain those relationships. Suggesting presents for a birthday is a simple example, helping is with organising a party for this specific person is a second, but eventually brands like Xobni will listen in on a conversation to make us (afterwards) aware of how we communicate. So that we can take it into account in future. We’re nowhere near that yet. After all, everything goes, you guessed it, step by step.

Related trends

• Coaching brands

If one wants to get the most out of their body, timing is crucial. Molecular clocks that are made out of proteins control our biorhythm and they need about a day (or more) to round down their cycle. Just like with the tide the concentration and activity of these proteins goes up and down. The regulator of the molecular clocks is located in the brain and is heavily dependent on the presence and absence of light. Scientists discovered a protein that can accelerate and slow the activities of genes rhythmically. A very interesting insight with relevant future impact.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

More and more scientific insight is made. In the long term, this insight with ensure that health, food and taxation will be tailored to the individual. Currently science is still very focused on averages. Because that’s currently the only way to explain the workings of medicine. With the individual approach we get (automated) advice on how we can stay as healthy as possible, to be as happy as possible and to get as old as possible. This type of insight, which by the by, match up with the insights we have before the golden days of western science, fit seamlessly into this.

Hyves, a Dutch social network, now has an application for the iPhone. The application has an address book with the contact details of all Hyvesfriends. With a press of a button the iPhone user can call his or her friends, mail them, text message them or send a note or PM. Besides that photos made with the iPhone can easily be placed on the Hyvespage and Hyvesphotos can be watched on the iPhone.

In a next version a map will be made available. You can use it to see where your friends are. This option, however, won't be available until next year. You'll also be able to see per spot which events there are and which of your friends are already there.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

More and more brands are discovering that there are many more screens beside the TV and the internet. The amount of screens will explode in the coming years and brands will appear on all of them. This is an example of that.

Furthermore we see in this development that technology is disappearing. If there’s anything that’s technical, it’s a phone number. Currently you add your phone number to your Hyves-profile yourself and friends can then call you. Now they still see the number, but later even that won’t be necessary anymore. And in the long term, you won’t know your number anymore either; it’ll be connected to the way you ‘sign up in the virtual world’ and you’ll be able to do that since childhood (so in a decade or so), so you won’t know any better than that it’s all automatic. It’s about wanting to call someone; not dialing a number, but calling someone’s name. That’s hidden in this.

Chip producer NXP has developed a chip for a car key. The chip helps you find your car back in a large parking lot. Holding the key near one's cell phone creates a connection with the car and then you receive the location on your cell which then navigates you neatly to your car. Furthermore the key lets you see which doors are locked and if they roof's closed. Useful for anyone doubting that when there are clouds drifting over when they're walking to the store.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Brands are going to coach us. They know much better than you which choices you can make, where you have to go and where you shouldn’t go. They’ll coach us in real time on the spot. It’s just a piece of technology, but it’ll be the most normal thing in the world.

Related trends

• Coaching brands

Using HuizenZoeker's (Dutch) housing market monitor, people looking for a house can keep track of actual figures and trends in the market. They can search by province, municipality, city or the type of house. The detailed page of the house has the median of the asking price and the average asking price per square meter in the municipality. For example, the average asking price per square meter in the Dutch municipality Bloemendaal is €5,188. A drop of 0.8% compared to last week.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Anything, absolutely anything in the physical world, will become transparent and mapped overseeably. Based on this information new companies, which enjoy the benefit of the doubt, will start to advise us individually. They earn from adding value to this information. This is a nice example in this direction.

Related trends

• Coaching brands

Dutch vacation review site Zoover has spread over 13 language areas. Zoover is partnering with tour operators that can place the reviews on their own site and in return Zoover is allowed to approach the vacation goers to write a review afterwards. The strength of the internationalisation is in the judgement, the hard numbers people give. Those are useable internationally. The reviews themselves won't be translated.

Future vision by Erwin van Lun

Coaching brands work worldwide with the greatest ease. They bring together ideas, thoughts, opinions, and can use them to advise the individual, help them along. That’s international per definition, not transcending border, international. Very slowly we’re letting go of thinking in countries to go over to a situation in which we view the 6,6 billion people living and working together on this earth as equals. Without borders, which we once created but slowly need less. But slowly, very slowly.

Related trends

• De-nationalizing