Trough of disillusionment for microblogging and social software?

The IT research firm Gartner has recently published another of its technology reports for 2009: Gartner's Hype Cycle Special Report for 2009. This report is another in a long line of similar Gartner reports which do exactly what they say on the tin. That is, they provide a technology 'hype cycle' for 2009! Did you see that coming?! The technology hype cycle was a topic that Johnny Read recently discussed at an ISG research reading group, so I thought it was worth commenting on.

According to Gartner - who I believe introduced the concept of the technology hype cycle - the expectations of new or emerging technology grows far more quickly that the technology itself. This is obviously problematic since user expectations get inflated only to be deflated later as the true value of the technology slowly becomes recognised. This true value is normally reached when the technology experiences mainstream use (i.e. plateau of productivity). The figure below illustrates the basic principles behind the hype cycle model.

The latest Gartner hype cycle (below) is interesting - and interesting is really as far as you can go with this because it's unclear how the hype cycles are compiled and whether they can be used for forecasting or as a true indicator of technology trends. Nevertheless, according to the hype cycle 2009, microblogging and social networking are on the decent into the trough of disillusionment.

From a purely personal view this is indeed good news as it might mean I don't have to read about Twitter in virtually every technology newspaper, blog and website for much longer, or be exposed to a woeful interview of the Twitter CEO on Newsnight. But I suppose it is easy to anticipate the plateau of productivity for these technologies. Social software has been around for a while now, and my own experiences would suggest that many people are starting to withdraw from it; the novelty has worn off. And remember, it's not just users that perpetuate the hype cycle, those wishing to harness the social graph for directed advertising, marketing, etc. are probably sliding down the trough of disillisionment too as the promise of a captive audience has not been financially fulfilled.

It's worth perusing the Gartner report itself - interesting. The above summary hype cycle figure doesn't seem to be available at the report, so I've linked to the version available at the BBC dot.life blog which also discusses the report.