Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Tag: gartner hype cycle

  • Can the Internet of Things survive a tumble?

    Can the Internet of Things survive a tumble?

    That the Internet of Things is posed to fall into the depths of the trough of disillusionment according to Gartner’s latest Hype Cycle should come as no surprise to those following the industry.

    For the industry, such a fall might not be a bad thing. During the upswing to the Peak of Heightened Expectations technologies attract the hot, dumb money along with the motley collection of shysters and opportunists a gold rush always lured in by the prospect of easy returns.

    When a product, technology or industry falls into what Gartner calls the trough of disillusionment it’s usually the time when its real value is discovered. Without the distractions of hype or dumb money distorting the market, the industry finds a way of using a product that’s become somewhat passe.

    For the Internet of Things, it won’t be a bad thing if the sector tumbles into the abyss. The sooner it happens, the faster industry will figure out where the real value and benefits lie.

    The only damage might be to some of the more prominent boosters’ egos and the hip pockets of some of the more over eager investors.

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  • Stages of hype – the Gartner Hype Cycle turns twenty

    Stages of hype – the Gartner Hype Cycle turns twenty

    Gartner’s Hype Cycle has been a favourite of this blog as it’s been pretty accurate at describing where various technologies are in the tech media’s eye.

    This year is the twentieth edition and the most notable aspect is the Internet of Things is shown as being right on the peak of industry hype.

    Other sectors struggling on the cycle are cloud computing, big data and machine-to-machine technologies; all of them are tumbling into the trough of disillusionment.

    gartner-hype-cycle-2014

    In itself this isn’t a bad thing for these technologies as the ‘trough of disillusionment’ is where the true business cases are found, certainly for the Internet of Things this will not be bad for a sector that’s clearly overhyped.

    There’s also the thought that not all troughs of disillusionment are the same as some concepts – such as Big Data – are actually trends which means they aren’t subject to the whims of corporate marketing departments.

    How the hype cycle will look in five years will be fascinating as things like brain-computing interfaces and the quantified self start to take form. When they reach the peak of the hype cycle we can expect many of today’s disillusioned technologies will be on the plateau of productivity.

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  • Social media’s irrational exuberance comes to an end

    Social media’s irrational exuberance comes to an end

    Last week saw the annual Y Combinator demo day where the startups funded by the incubator get to strut their stuff and it appears the age of social media hype is over.

    In the Wall Street Journal’s Digits blog, Amir Efrati reports Social is Out, Revenue is In as the companies showed off their income streams rather than the number of users which has been the measure for free social media apps.

    That social media is out shouldn’t be surprising as the services have been tracking a standard Gartner Hype Cycle with a boom in services, coverage and investments that’s now turning into the inevitable bust and a fall into the trough of disillusionment.

    Coupled with that fall for social media services are the disappointing stockmarket floats of Facebook and Groupon which have cruelled the enthusiasm for investing in tech startups with lots of user but not much revenue.

    Last week’s headlines featuring Yahoo!’s purchase of Summly for $30 million and Amazon’s acquisition of Goodreads for an estimated $150 million show how the days of greater fools writing billion dollar cheques is over as more sensible valuations take hold.

    Amazon’s purchase of Goodreads is more interesting than Yahoo! buying a teenage wunderkind’s venture in that Amazon is cementing its position at the centre of the global book publishing industry.

    Goodreads has been one of the quiet social media success of recent years having built its subscriber base to over 16 million members sharing book reviews and reading lists.

    The book review site is a natural fit for Amazon although the head of the US Authors’ Guild rightly worries the company is becoming a monopoly.

    Of course the obvious retort to this is that someone else could have bought the site and Forrester’s James McQuivey speculates on why an established publisher didn’t do so much earlier.

    This year’s Y Combinator Demo Day and the acquisitions of Goodreads and Summly show the era of irrational tech exuberance is over.

    For good businesses operators and investors this is not a bad thing as everyone can now focus on building good businesses rather than worrying about hype, spin and fools with more money than sense.

    Photo of Ashton Kutcher speaking at Y Combinator by Robert Scoble through Wikimedia commons

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  • Social media and the Gartner hype cycle

    Social media and the Gartner hype cycle

    “Social media has become a tiresome hobby” complained a social media expert over coffee, “my heart is no longer in it.”

    There’s been much hype about social media, if you listen to some people services like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest were going to revolutionise marketing and fundamentally change business.

    Now the hype seems to be escaping from the social media industry as its practitioners, and the businesses who’ve embraced it, become exhausted with the long, hard grind of fighting a revolution.

    This exuberance followed by exhaustion is fairly typical in the technology industry, consulting company Gartner describes it in their Hype Cycle, which shows how a new product goes a period of excitement, peaks and then tumbles into a trough of disillusionment.

    It could be that social media is approaching that peak.

    That’s not all bad news for social media, after a product falls into the trough of disillusionment, the technology matures and industry figures out how to best use the product.

    Microsoft founder Bill Gates put it well when he said “in the short run we over-estimate the effects of technology, and in the long term we under-estimate the effects.”

    Probably the best example of this process is the World Wide Web itself, the irrational exuberance drove the dot com boom which peaked at the turn of the century and then plummeted into the trough of disillusionment.

    Companies like Amazon and Google who stayed the course through the dark days of 2002 and 2003 were richly rewarded when the market came good.

    For the social media people who can stay the course through that dismal period they may not become as successful as Amazon and Google, but there’s good opportunities for those who survive.

    In some ways, passing the peak of inflated expectations is good news. It means the hard work and adding value is just beginning.

    Image from Gastonmag via sxc.hu

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