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March 14, 2006 | Comments: (0)
The Latest Hype Machine - Web 2.0
The Gartner Group has attempted to describe and quantify the technology 'hype cycle' -- a quite funny, yet all too realistic description of how new technologies are triggered, oversold, crash, then come home to roost (i.e. become a productive part of the technology toolkit).
Gartner has some great material on this -- worth the read.
Unfortunately, every time I see things like the crazy hyperbole surrounding the Web 2.0, I break out in a rash -- has everyone forgotten the hype of the late '90s?
Apparently not.
The crap that I see now being flogged as 'new' is astounding. Sites that have a little whizz-bang AJAX, or combine data sources for some interesting displays (the 'mashups'), are all now 'revolutionary'. What a load of hype. As if graphical display technologies, no matter how ubiquitously adopted, have ever really changed the state of computing. Mind me now -- I'm now talking about the great ascii-text shell to GUI divide, but rather the constant evolution from X11 to Aqua (my favorite). People are missing the point.
None of these businesses are sustainable -- their business plans all look like:
1 - Develop some unpronouncable name for the company
2 - Throw together some set of data and code to look cool
3 - 'Create' a revenue model based on AdSense, and most importantly,
4 - Sell it to Yahoo!
Try it yourself! It's liberating.
The point is -- the survivors of the first crash of the Internet craze have realized that the old Internet model -- get people to stay on you site forever in a sort of sticky goo-like mess of capabilities (read AOL) won't work, and that opening up your information for widespread use (syndication) is the only way to survive. The forerunners of this were people like Amazon who opened up their platform, and Google in the Google API. The re-discovery of XML in RSS, and the idea that we could have our systems exchange information (rather than rendering the data for me on a site) is the real revolution. And revolution it is -- not in the way that the 1,000's of new startups believe, but rather in the way we all design systems (either for the Internet or within the Firewall).
That is the real story here -- not the cool social networking sites, Google Maps applications, or other crap. Liberate your data, and the world is your oyster.
Posted by Paul T. Ryan on March 14, 2006 04:56 PM
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Yup, this industry is awash in hype. But what is the hype in service of?
Motivating existing and potential future customers, of course. Some mechanism is needed to move the market.
It could be worse. The motivational force could be negatively based, upon fear as an example. The classic Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) is a negative motivational tool. FUD is normally used to prevent customers from moving to another vendor. The principle is the same however.
Just remember that the next time you are trying to convince your tight-fisted boss to spend some money on a new project. Change usually needs some serious motivational force.
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