Coolhunting for trends on the Web

This paper introduces a new way of measuring the popularity of brand names and famous people such as movie stars, politicians, and business executives. It is based upon the premise that in todaypsilas Internet economy the Web displays a mirror of the real world. Our system uses TeCFlow, a social networking tool developed for the last four years at MIT, to measure popularity and influence of brands and stars by looking at their relative position on the Web. It is based on the simple insight: ldquoYou are who links to yourdquo. It applies the Social Network Analysis( SNA) metric of ldquobetweennessc entralityrdquo to the Web, looking at the linking structure of Web sites to find how Web pages discussing brands and stars are connected. It uses high-betweenness Web sites returned to a search engine query for a brand or star name as a proxy for the significance of this brand or star.

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