There is a fairly predictable trajectory of all technology adoption – something which has become all the more prevalent in the 15 years until now, thanks to the sheer speed of new technology development. I read with interest this brief article outlining the Gartner “Hype Cycles for New Technologies” Report 2009, and one of the things they predicted was that Twitter had reached the peak of the ‘inflated expection’ and was starting to descend down the other side.
Frankly, this doesn’t surprise me.
Human nature is such that when something new comes, only a few people will try it out as most of us are inherently conservative and prefer to stick with what we know, or simply don’t find out about it. When something goes mainstream, suddenly things begin to become frenzied. Everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon, afraid that if they don’t it might leave without them. The result is that the bandwagon starts to get overloaded. More people jump on and the wheels begin to slow. Eventually, the bandwagon has been swamped and it stops moving altogether – at which point, people begin to realise that it isn’t helping them and many of the pioneers jump off again, grumbling that the whole thing has been ruined.
Twitter, in my opinion, is getting to the stage when the bandwagon has started to become overloaded. Originally, Twitter was a fantastic tool for personal communication, getting to know people on a one to one basis, and building and consolidating relationships. It is still that tool, but many of the people who have jumped on it haven’t realised what the tool is for. They have one thought in their mind – this will get me rich/successful/popular quickly because it says so in the papers. If it works for Oprah, it will work for me. As such, somewhere along the line the thing that made Twitter so powerful has been forgotten beneath its ‘potential for marketing to vast numbers of people’.
You can almost predict when a technology is going to start slipping down the other side of the crest by doing a simple search for that tool in Google. The number of Twitter articles, Twitter seminars, Twitter experts, Make a Million With Twitter promises that are appearing everyday indicates that the wheels are starting to slow. In fact, this article is just one amongst the millions of others out there. And this article is probably not alone in trying to see things as they really are.
Believe it or not, I am not anti-Twitter at all. I was on Twitter back before it went mainstream and I saw how powerful it could be. I would like to see every Twitter user to relearn those values and use the strengths of the tool rather than try to twist the tool to what they know. And I do believe that will happen. The Gartner article talks about the Slope of Enlightenment as the next phase. We will know that Twitter is entering that phase when the number of self-proclaimed Twitter experts begin to dwindle (as many will be on to the next technology), the tool drops out of the sensational headlines, and companies start to adopt it on a strategic and sustained level, as a fundamental part of their communication arsenal, along with email and the telephone.
I look forward to that time. Twitter certainly has the capability of being there.
Thank you to Matt Hamm for the fantastic image
If you like this post, why not subscribe to our RSS Feed. Or you can visit our main website at Tiger Two or follow me on Twitter or Friendfeed
Tags: disillusionment, Gartner, mainstream, Twitter
