GARTNER HYPE CYCLE AND THE HIVE CULTURE

Gartner has been publishing its Hype Cycles since 1995. The latest one is out. See below. It describes a Hype Cycle as:

A graphic representation of the maturity, adoption and business application of specific technologies. They characterize the over-enthusiasm or "hype" and subsequent disappointment that typically happens with the introduction of new technologies.

You can see in the 2009 chart below that we are at the top of the cycle for cloud computing, and e-book readers, but microblogging is heading downwards to the trough of disillusionment. I'm not sure of the scientific objectivity of this as a study, but I kind of agree with its findings.

The two hype charts below are 2005, and 1995. 1995 is the really interesting one. Speech recognition seems to be eternally at the plateau of productivity. I'd love to know what's holding it up. Business Rule Engine was two posts behind Speech recognition in 2005 on the plateau of productivity, but seems to have come and gone.

The interesting part of these hype charts is not the latter stages, but what is being hyped at the peak of inflated expectations. The information superhighway was hyped in 1995, and is here. Intelligent Agents were also hyped, and they are not here.

The peak of inflated expectations is due to the hive culture we all work in. We read the same things, write about the same things, and produce the same things. Yesteryear - in a more fragmented age - we worked as part of smaller creative cultures. Now we are all linked by that once hyped, but now here, information superhighway. Everybody is having the same ideas. It's all about execution now. It's no longer the Devil we see in the detail, but as Mies van Der rohe said: God is in details. In a more interlinked world, ideas are spouting from everywhere. They are now the commodity, its how you execute them that counts.

IS SOCIAL MEDIA A FAD OR THE BIGGEST CHANGE SINCE THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION VIDEO?

You might have aready seen this on other blogs - another example of the hive culture, where we are all feeding from the same sources. But just in case. There are some interesting stats in here, worth knowing.

AMAZING DATA VISUALISATIONS

I'm loving this work by Aaron Koblin of Google Creative Lab, visualizing Amsterdam's SMS Messages. Data visualisation is my big thing right now, and was impressed at the cleverness and beauty of this.

Amsterdam SMS messages on New Years Eve from Aaron on Vimeo.

And this work looks at Yahoo search data through time around the world. The search query is in the top left hand side of the screen, and the time and date in the top right hand side of the screen. Watch how different parts of the world light up when certain search queries are tracked. Watch for India when cricket appears, and the east coast of America when Miss Teen USA is queried. Very cool

Yahoo! Search Burst Globe from Aaron on Vimeo.

FACEBOOK IS DEVELOPING ITS BUSINESS MODEL BUT STILL HASN'T MONETISED THE SOCIAL GRAPH

Last year in an interview with FAZ Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook was asked: "The web 2.0 architecture is not necessarily a revenue opportunity. This is not where the money is", said Eric Schmidt from Google. Do you agree with him?

Zuckerberg said:

"What every great Internet company has done is to figure out a way to make money that has to match to what they are doing on the site. I don't think social networks can be monetized in the same way that search did. But on both sites people find information valuable. I'm pretty sure that we will find an analogous business model. But we are experimenting already. One group is very focused on targeting; another part is focused on social recommendation from your friends. In three years from now we have to figure out what the optimum model is. But that is not our primary focus today"

I suspect the relaxed "it's not our focus today" hides a growing fear from the increasing threat from Twitter, and the even bigger threat from Google. The interview was this time last year, and I have met with Facebook several times in recent months and think they are getting interesting again inspite of the confusing redesign. First Facebook Connect, and now its acquisition of Friendfeed. They are building systems for advertisers, new product features, and an infrastructure for servicing clients and agencies. All good stuff, they are generally tightening up their game.

Of the two areas that Zuckerberg highlighted: social recommendations and targeting, the more interesting is social recommendations. That was the original promise of the social graph. A term he popularised, and a term I used for my blog. It pointed at something mathematical, anthropological, and fresh.

The term social graph and its sister social networking, still often get used interchangeably and mistakenly. The best explanation of this came from Robert Scoble, several years ago when he said:

"The Social Graph is NOT my social network.

My Social Network is my friends list. But the Social Graph shows a LOT more than that. For instance, did you know you can see everyone who is into skiing on Facebook? Did you know you can see everyone who is into Daft Punk? Those people are NOT in my social network. But they are part of the social graph that you can study on Facebook. Interesting how we have disagreements about language.

So, what would you call what you can see in Facebook? It isn’t just my social network, though. Try again."

Facebook knows us. It knows what we like. It knows who we like. It should now be developing powerful algorithms that help us visualise and identify new services, products, experiences, and opportunities. At worse it should use Amazon like collaborative filtering technology to make recommendations, but at best should be inventing new ways for us to shop and discover. Its probably harder than it seems, as Facebook has hired some of the leading brains from graph theory and network science.

Perhaps Eric Schmidt, of Google, was right when he said "The web 2.0 architecture is not necessarily a revenue opportunity. This is not where the money is".

I hope not.

But only time will tell.