Gartner maintains a series of well-followed reports, called Hype Cycles. The Social Software Hype Cycle highlights the most important technologies that support rich social interactions.
Here are the five stages of the hype cycle:
1. Technology Trigger
The first phase of a Hype Cycle is the "technology trigger" or breakthrough, product launch or other event that generates significant press and interest. A "technology trigger" is breakthrough, public demonstration, product launch or other event generates significant press and industry interest.
2. Peak of Inflated Expectations
In the next phase, a frenzy of publicity typically generates over-enthusiasm and unrealistic expectations. There may be some successful applications of a technology, but there are typically more failures.
3. Trough of Disillusionment
Technologies enter the "trough of disillusionment" because they fail to meet expectations and quickly become unfashionable. Consequently, the press usually abandons the topic and the technology.
4. Slope of Enlightenment
Although the press may have stopped covering the technology, some businesses continue through the "slope of enlightenment" and experiment to understand the benefits and practical application of the technology.
5. Plateau of Productivity
A technology reaches the "plateau of productivity" as the benefits of it become widely demonstrated and accepted. The technology becomes increasingly stable and evolves in second and third generations.
On July 24, 2009, Gartner released its Social Software Hype Cycle, 2009. The report includes quite a number of technologies under the social software umbrella:
Spigit was listed as a sample vendor in three of the technologies above:
- Activity-Specific Social Applications
- Idea Management
- Prediction Markets
These technologies are described in more detail below. You can also click here to read how companies are specifically using Spigit .
Activity-Specific Social Applications: Applying the approaches of social software to solve specific problems is an emerging theme in the realm of Enterprise 2.0. Here is what analyst Anthony Bradley says about the technology:
"As social software implementations mature, application patterns are evolving, and the software industry is responding with activity-centric social application offerings rather than with generic social software capability suites. Delivering a targeted social solution with a general purpose social tool (such as wikis and blogs) can involve significant development, configuration, and templating effort."
In our work with large organizations, this is something we hear as well. Companies are looking for horizontal solutions that address critical priorities while leveraging the powerful collaborative abilities that social software provides. Addressing specific activities makes it easier to see the ROI of an application. It also fosters increased in adoption, as the work on the platform is better integrated with the daily activities, priorities and initiatives of the organization.
When we talk about purpose-built social software, this is what we have in mind.
Idea Management: The field of idea management is relatively new. Here is what analysts Carol Rozwell and Kathy Harris say about the technology:
"Companies in a wide variety of industries are turning to idea management as a way to bolster innovation that drives the sales of existing products, creates new opportunities to increase revenue, or radically changes process or cost structure. Industries that emphasize new product development were early adopters of idea management tools. In 2009, service industries and government are increasingly adopting innovation and idea management practices."
We couldn't agree more with their perspective. Uptake of idea management platforms is occurring across industries. Why? Think about the ways organizations currently have to manage innovation. Email, meeting notes, PowerPoint slides, spreadsheets, customer service databases, etc. Each one of those bases for managing ideas is a silo. These ad hoc, isolated efforts cause good ideas to fall through the cracks, people with relevant knowledge to miss others' ideas and difficulty in maintaining a healthy innovation pace. On the other hand, a common idea management platform taps emergent contributions internally and externally.
Every day, we see increased interest in idea management platforms.
Prediction Markets: Prediction markets have been around in one form or another for centuries. For example, the case of the crowd's average guessed weight of a bull being incredibly accurate as described in James Surowiecki's book, The Wisdom of Crowds. Here's what analysts Jeffrey Mann and Mathew Cain say about the technology:
"Prediction markets can help model outcomes more accurately for sales efforts, product delivery dates, product uptake rates, manufacturing capacity needs, product ideas, marketing campaigns and competitive actions, among other things."
We're seeing prediction markets used for targeted judgments by experts. These give companies a way to capture the intuition of individuals beyond a simple statement of, "I think the outcome may be..." Use of prediction markets provides a set of probabilities for different outcomes to specified events. In another development, several technology industry leaders have applied to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission arguing for the legalization of small stake for-money prediction markets.
In the hype cycle report, there is this note: "Several early adopters also report frustration with the cost and effort required to set up these markets." Something that we've done at Spigit is to make it extremely easy to set up powerful prediction markets.
The full report is 69 pages. Well worth a read if you get a copy.
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