Gartner has published their most recent “Hype Cycle” report, this one covering emerging technologies. The report covers 44 technologies, and prognosticates when they will reach the “plateau of productivity”…that is, mainstream business use and acceptance. Corporate blogging and RSS are flagged as technologies that will take “less than two years” to reach the plateau, with wikis on their tail in the 2-5 year window.
The interesting thing about Gartner’s analysis of all three of these technologies is that all are still positioned as being before the “trough of disillusionment” — that is, the inevitable backlash to their initial hype is yet to come. (n.b. Podcasting’s hype is still on the upswing, according to this, if you can believe it…)
Opinion (mine, not Gartner’s): Of these technologies, RSS is going to be the one that is going to have the greatest challenge slogging through the trough to true mass-market (i.e. not early-adopter) usage. Until there is a truly “zero-training” method of publishing, finding, and subscribing to RSS feeds (which might not even be called RSS feeds in a couple of years), RSS will have a challenge crossing the chasm, to use Geoffrey Moore’s terminology.
(hat tip: Steve Rubel for the initial link. Of course we went out, did some research, and dug a bit deeper to find the details ::poke:: But that’s what we do.)
Not sure I agree with you on RSS – certainly mass adoption is a ways off but I fully believe it will happen. But I also believe RSS adoption will be bottom-up – driven from the consumer/personal (rather than corporate) market – and what does Gartner know about that anyhow…
The biggest obstacle to RSS adoption is and will be the direct marketing community (particularly the list brokers). For all that marketers love to talk about ‘one-to-one’ marketing and personalization, many are truly terrified of consumers having the ability to make their own choices.
RSS is still far too abstract – for it to take off, non-tech-types need to better understand the problems the technology can solve – and it’s been surprising to me that there’s been so little written about this. I’m personally partial to the TiVo analogy – see http://reservoirpartners.typepad.com/reservoir_partners_enterp/2005/07/rss__the_tivo_o.html
Chris…Your last paragraph eloquently gets at what I was trying to say. Until that TiVo-like “RSS receiver” is a default component that is just “there” when a browser is installed, and is as easy to use as a bookmark is today, we’re not going to have true “mass-market” adoption.
Throw on top of that the need for a real RSS search engine that finds not just the posts, but the feeds that are of interest, and the inertia from the production side (i.e. getting risk averse companies to change their thinking and implement the technologies needed to produce RSS feeds for the things that matter), it’ll be a while. Inevitable, yes. Tomorrow, no. Two years? Maybe, if the stars align.
My impression is blogging is still very, very early in its adoption stage and will stay that way. Wikis and RSS even more so.
Especially in this country, the mainstream market works HARD hours at their day jobs – either in an office fighting office politics, bureaucracy, just getting things done – it’s exhausting. The last thing they want to do (or can do b/c of the other important responsibilities in their lives) is go home at the end of the day, after taking care of the kids or doing their homework or taking care of some other form of personal business, is log onto their computer (they were on them all day) and start reading and writing through blogs or wikis. This is why TV, video games, real books, are still thriving. It’s not associated with work.
If I owned a blog-supplier company, I apply my capital at getting blogs into corporate America. I’d figure out the real life business situations where Blogs can help business people achieve goals and overcome issues. Until that’s figured out, blogs will remain, like sex – more people talking about it than doing it.
As far as RSS – isn’t that an old Soviet secret service group? That would be the response of 95% of America. Like Web services, fuel injection and the spring inside my pen, it will be most useful and used when nobody needs to consider that it’s there.
Wikis – aren’t those the wax-like things my kids play with at restauants?
My broader point is that these technologists who push Bolgs, Wikis, RSS continue to fail to understand that they need to crack the code for the mainstream market and explain usage!
New technologies and efficiencies have effected our work day. I find that I get more done in less time, but noone is cutting my hours.
Most people read blogs and set up their RSS readers during the day. At work.
Plus, with tools like My Yahoo having RSS, honestly, I think the average person can very much use RSS technology quite easily.
I’ve got no idea what the deal is with wiki though. At this point, I’ve got absolutely no interest in it at all.
Happy Friday! (And look what I’m doing at work!)
And remember – TiVo is basically a Linux PC. Imagine if they tried to sell it THAT way to consumers!