Gartner looks to the future of online marketing
13 August 2008, 12:31 pm (1 comments) in Internet Marketing News
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Gartner has been highlighting technologies it thinks will play a big part in business in the near future, including in online marketing.
Worryingly calling its report "Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2008", the analyst goes on to use phrases like "Trough of Disillusionment" - Web 2.0 is entering this - and "Slope of Enlightenment", up which cloud computing and service-oriented architecture (SOA) are sliding.
While analysts at Gartner seem to have been reading too many lifestyle books, what they are saying is that Web 2.0 is currently not living up to its hype but will soon.
"It will emerge within two years to have transformational impact, as companies steadily gain more experience and success with both the technologies and the cultural implications", as Gartner Fellow Jackie Fenn puts it.
And in the case of cloud computing and SOA, transformation will be delivered in between two and five years.
Finally, public virtual worlds, which are "suffering from disillusionment" in Ms Fenn's words, will "in the long term represent an important media channel to support and build broader communities of interest".
But do these technologies really represent a new way of conducting business and online marketing, or has Gartner been caught up in its own Hype Cycle?
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Article Last Updated 4 December 2008, 6:00 pm
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The renowned Gartner Group's latest Hype Cycle report places "Web 2.0" in a "Trough of Disillusionment":
http://tinyurl.com/6ycvs8
But for a few good chuckles, I suggest you Google the following and browse the first 20-30 listings:
failures Gartner Group
warnings Gartner Group
Gartner Group expects
Gartner Group predicts
As for "Web 2.0?, like so many tech articles posted since Tim O'Reilly (or was it Dale Dougherty?) first coined the term in 2004 (or was it 2005?), this one references "Web 2.0" as if it were something tangible--or at least a concept with clear, concise definition. It is not. In 2006, Web founder Sir Tim Berners-Lee sagely observed that "nobody knows what it means":
http://tinyurl.com/y6ewzy
In 2007, Michael Wesch put together this video that supposedly "explains what Web 2.0 really is about":
http://tinyurl.com/6pdz2q
It is a cool video. But the message is all about XML and how it can be used to separate form and content. There was no mention of CSS and XHTML, but no matter. I was writing XML parsers in the '90s, and XHTML/CSS web design pre-dates "Web 2.0" as well.
And now in 2008, the most honest thing we can say is that "Web 2.0" means whatever the techno-marketeer (ab)using it wants it to mean. Otherwise, why would intelligent people like Isaac O'Bannon still be writing articles asking "What is Web 2.0?":
http://tinyurl.com/5solok
And, why would McKinsey's just-released best-of-breed report entitled "Building the Web 2.0 Enterprise" ...
http://tinyurl.com/6sxls7
... include no attempt at defining the term other than to list the "Web 2.0 Tools" that comprise or enable it? And even there, the chief ingredient is identified only as "Web Services", adding more mystery to the mix as one ethereal term is offered up to explain another.
As originated in an Onstartups.com website design posting...
http://tinyurl.com/576sgs
... "Web 2.0" is like pornography: Nobody has defined it; you just have to know it when you see it.
Bruce Arnold, Web Design Miami Florida
http://www.PervasivePersuasion.com