Gartner Hype Cycle 2012: Into the trough

Special snowflakes are gleefully shouting ‘told you so’ about social media marketing.

So brave.

Gartner released their 2012 hype cycle a few days ago. Look at it below:

You can see text analytics there, reaching the absolute bottom. Everybody, it seems, these days can say that text analytics sucks. Which is great, because being negative about an entire field is the surest way to demonstrate expertise in an otherwise crowded pack. They’re brave too.

Predictive analytics is now mainstream, which is awesome because I no longer need to spend 12 weeks extolling its virtues early in the development cycle.

Our good friends: HMTL5, Gamification and Big Data are nearing the peak too. Social analytics, it would seem, is jumping the shark as we speak.

It’s predictable

• You’re going to read a lot more bad press about big data, gamification, and social analytics in the next year.

• It’ll be popular to say that it’s overhyped because of the hype cycle – everybody can read the same chart. Pandering panderers pander.

• If you had productivity in mind as you were building out your strategy and product, the trough only makes the sales funnel more efficient, with more qualified leads and less froth as your customers realize they have a genuine opportunity-problem-solution set.

***

I’m Christopher Berry.
Follow me @cjpberry
I blog at christopherberry.ca