Back in May last year I wrote about the ‘Hype Cycle’ devised by technology research company Gartner to illustrate the adoption, maturity, and business application of specific technologies, and I specifically considered where on the cycle various online fundraising initiatives lay.
So with the release of the the 2009 Hype Cycle Report, I was interested to compare where things are now (see the chart above) compared to where they were last year (see the chart below).
There are certainly some interesting shifts here from the perspective of the digital fundraiser.
For starters, Microblogging has swept over the ‘Peak of Inflated Expectations’ and on towards the ‘Trough of Disillusionment’ in just one year – thanks essentially to the phenomenal rise of Twitter. However, this doesn’t mean that all the Twitter nay-sayers have been proved correct – because if Twitter adoption and application continues at this pace then it could just as well whizz up the ‘Slope of Enlightenment’ towards the ‘Plateau of Productivity’ by this time next year. It certainly seems to be moving towards mainstream adoption far faster than Gartner predicted in 2008.
Web 2.0 can be seen to have started this migration towards general acceptance already, moving from the ‘Trough’ in 2008 to the start of the ‘Slope’ now. Driven forwards by its increasingly widespread adoption, but at the same time probably held back by the challenge of effectively monitising the massive interest in Web 2.0 applications. Likewise, Corporate Blogging can be seen to have moved on at much the pace predicted by Gartner.
Noticeably lagging behind in the progress stakes are Public Virtual Worlds, like SecondLife, which fell rapidly from an high ‘Peak of Expectations’ back in 2007 (anyone else remember the Pet Shop Boys ‘playing’ at Secondfest?) and now seem stuck down in the ‘Trough of Disillusionment’ with minimal progress over the last year. I guess that makes last month’s Second Life Relay for Life, raising over $270,000 for the American Cancer Society, an even more notable success.
You can read more about Gartner’s Hype Cycle here.
