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Has Twitter's popularity peaked?

• Maggie Shiels
• 12 Aug 09, 09:03 GMT

I know some of our readers are frankly sick to the back teeth of stories about Twitter, well now it seems a leading technology research company is in step with you and feels the buzz surrounding the microblogging service is set to blow up.

In Gartner's 2009 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies report, the company charts what's hot and what's not in the world of technology.

To this aim, they have looked at the maturity of 1,650 technologies and trends in 79 technology, topic and industry areas.

Technologies that are peaking during 2009 include cloud computing, e-books like those from Amazon and Sony and internet TV like Hulu.

On the graph they are at the top of what the company has called "the peak of inflated expectations" with nowhere else to go but down by the looks of things.

Those technologies that have clearly lost their sheen include green IT, video teleprescence, social software and microblogging sites like Twitter.

According to Jackie Fenn, vice president and Gartner fellow as well as co-author of the book Mastering the Hype Cycle:

"Microblogging, in general, and Twitter, in particular, have exploded in popularity during 2009 to the extent that the inevitable disillusionment around 'channel pollution' is beginning".

Ms Fenn went onto say that services like Twitter are earning a place alongside e-mail, blogging and wikis:

"[E]nabling new kinds of fast, witty, easy-to-assimilate exchanges".

But surely that's good news? Well not according to Ms Fenn and her very impressive diagram which shows it is actually heading for the "trough of disillusionment." I don't fancy getting abandoned there any time soon!

Among the most hyped technologies of the year so far are cloud computing, media broadcasting, mobile device technologies, photovoltaic solar energy, virtualisation, enterprise information management and datacentre power and cooling technologies.

But what does Gartner mean by the hype cycle? Well it's about human nature. The cycle charts that crazy giddiness that goes arm and arm with something new and shiny to basically getting bored with it and then eventually realising its value and how it just fits into your life.

In the crystal ball gazing section of the study, Gartner predicts that RFID (those tags you get on products), 3-D printing, human augmentation, mobile robots, home health monitoring, wireless power and quantum computing are technologies that should be emerging into the so called "slope of enlightenment".

All this of course should perhaps be taken with a pinch of salt.

As Reuters news noted, the report says:

"It will take up to five years for many of today's trendy technologies to become mainstream, including Web 2.0.
 
"Funny how long hype cycles take to pay out. Three years ago, in its 2006 Hype Cycle reporter, Gartner predicted Web 2.0 would go mainstream within just two years."

It doesn't take a Nobel prize winner to work out that the maths is way off somewhere.

So what do you think are the technologies to look out for along with the ones that are on their way out and have had their day?

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