A Source that Provides Insight into the Future

 Well, the summer is most definitely over now--it's time to go back to blogging! So here begins the return of my weekly Monday morning blog.

This is just a short one to get us slowly warmed up again, and it's a bit of an homage to the passing of the much beloved Yogi Berra, who was reported to have said "prediction is difficult--especially about the future."

Well, yes as usual Yogi was spot on. But is there a source online that can give you a window into the future?

According to Nathan Gilliat, the founder of the valuable news and directory site on social listening called Social Target, there is.

In an interview with Nathan, he said that although vendors post  white papers and research papers to generate market leads, what they choose to write about and focus on reflects what those companies are thinking about, planning, and want to launch soon. As such, getting a sense of what's being discussed in those documents can provide some good intelligence into what you're likely to see introduced or emphasized very soon.

Thanks for that tip Nathan. The full interview is part of an indepth two part article I just wrote on selecting and comparing social listening tools, published in the October and November issues of The Information Advisor's Guide to Internet Research.