Nextatlas, pioneer in detecting trends on the web

By

Dominique Muret

Published
May 22, 2015

For years, experts have put their noses to the wind across the globe in order to anticipate trends. In the internet age, the brothers Luca and Alessio Morena - the former a philosophy researcher, the latter a architect/web designer - had the simple idea to perform the same type of research directly on the web... and they discovered that nobody had yet thought of the idea! They created Nextatlas, the first internet trend detector.

After launching the app Icoolhunt in 2010, a photo-sharing platform designed to highlight the latest trends, the two brothers from Turin, co-founders and CEOs of the company Icoolhunt, launched the service Nextatlas, a website (nextatlas.com) on which brands can easily visualize emerging trends according to sectors and their needs, via the aggregation of images from various social media streams like Tweeter, Instagram and Tumbler. 

"For several years we have been witnessing a radical change, where reality now makes itself known on the internet. So we thought, why not take advantage of this wealth of information generated by the internet in order to set up regular monitoring. We aggregate all the things that have a mutual affinity. It’s not just fashion trends, but of all the movements emerging in different areas,” explained Luca Morena.

The Morena brothers developed a series of algorithms and processes that achieve, through the aggregation of images and similar tags, visual content parsed by their analysis filters. Their editorial team then puts these trends in context. 

Ads

"There are no more seasons; the information comes in real time and can be geotagged as needed. We thus offer our customers a vision of all current trends, while also indicating their popularity," said Luca Morena. 

The company, whose operational base is in Turin and whose headquarters is in Pula in Sardinia, employs ten people, and has already attracted investors such as Atlante Ventures Mezzogiorno, a private equity fund run by the Italian bank Intesa Sanpaolo. It currently has fifteen clients, from Prada to e-Pitti.com, as well as Fiat, Maserati, Barilla, insurer Allianz and L'Oréal, Kiko, Freddy and Yamamay.

With thousands of data compiled and analyzed and offering customized dashboards, Nextatlas can be used in several different ways. It is used, for example, by apparel brands to better understand how to compose their stock or to find inspiration for their next collection. 

This service is also useful for product development and marketing, in order to develop advertising campaigns in line with current trends across sectors.