Reinier Evers is the founder of Trendwatching.com, a trend firm which publishes monthly, free trend briefings on the future of business. A sister site called Springwise profiles companies implementing innovations stemming from trends. TheNextWomen talked to Reinier about trends and the Internet entrepreneur.

How should Internet startups make use of trends?

One mistake companies make is to think that all trends apply to all consumers. You need to know your market to determine whether a particular trend is relevant.

Internet startups should realise that their market is often not made up of tech-savvy people like themselves. The Internet is really just another means of distributing your product.

An example where an Internet Entrepreneur may be ahead of its own target market is the customized travel guide site (Offbeat Guides) launched by Technorati founder Dave Sifry. It's a great idea but the site looks like a tech blog when it should be a glossy travel magazine.

What about the new Status Symbols: 'Creation' and 'Doing' vs 'Consuming' and 'Owning'?

What people consume is still what drives them the most, but we see a new type of status which is based on peoples' online lives. In this world, status is determined by how many people follow you on Twitter, view your pictures on Flickr, etc.

Generation C is the content generation. Every person has a creative urge but this urge is not encouraged in a consumer society. New technology allowed people to unlock that creativity and I think this creative segment will increase. There is an online collaborative lifestyle now which -by default- is about sharing.

Another new status symbol is the unique experience, 'doing' rather than 'owning', especially in richer societies where many people can afford to buy the same things. A trend we see in this respect is status stories which are the stories you can tell people about an experience.We recently did a case study with a hotel in Hong Kong which has an amazing penthouse suite.

We asked people if they would want to stay in the suite for free on condition that they could never tell anyone about it. For most people, this decreases the value of the experience to almost nothing.

Brands think that they have to tell consumers a story whereas in fact they just need to give people the ingredients to tell their own stories.

How do trends vary between regions? Can European, US and Asian Startups learn from each other?

Consumerism is global. Culture is very local.

US culture is still much more obsessed with consumerism and material success than Europe. European startups need to realise that they are competing with US entrepreneurs, people who are 10 times more focused on that kind of success than they are.

However, the US is not the best at everything. US Entrepreneurs should look at what Europe does really well, for example design, and try to import it into the US.

Similarly, Asia has great strengths in areas like attention to detail, discipline and a collaborative way of working. The US should be not be viewed as the standard to be reached but rather as just as another market. The standard is set in different places worldwide for different disciplines.