ThingsAmongMany

Trend-spotting and cool hunting sites abound these days (yes, some might classify this site amongst their ranks). Without getting into a discussion of what qualifies as a such a site, I will say that most of these are blogs - sites that consider their small writing staff a group of experts who others should look up to. Sure, they’re open to commenting and discussion. And not many would argue that a blog is anything but a community-oriented type of site. But now that notion has been taken a step further.

Whether you want to call it more “2.0″ than these blogs or a step toward something even further, social aspects of the connected world are here to stay. And a new site has now stepped forward to bring trendcasting out of the blogosphere. Check out edopter. Created by the pair at One Blue Brick, Matthew Rosenberg and Andy Thompson, edopter allows any user to establish what they see as an upcoming trend. As other edopters join to support that trend, it grows more established within the system. Users who create more popular trends, of course, gain rank within the system.

It probably sounds a lot more complicated than it is, but its something along the lines of trend-spotting blog meets social network (despite their claim that they don’t want it to be a social network). There’s still a few kinks that are in the process of being worked out, but after chatting with Andy, it sounds like they’re well on their way to sorting things out. And if you’re in need of a new trend to support, how about jumping on the *AmongMany bandwagon?