Technology Hype

The Internet has proven to be a particularly good platform for deploying new technology. Of course, these new technologies are largely made up of existing components that have simply been bundled in a new way with a thin wrapper of added value. The unfortunate thing is that so many new ideas are coming to market all accompanied by a lot of hype that it is difficult to tell the worthwhile from the waste of time.

One of these new ideas is Twitter, another in a long line of Web 2.0 social networking sites. I've checked out the Twitter home page several times now expecting to be hit over the head with the obvious benefits of the service. Instead, I leave the site every time wondering why everyone is excited and what it is that I'm missing.

So when I read Jane Copland's post, Waiting for Twitter, earlier today I was pleased to discover that I had indeed not been missing a thing. Her conclusion says it all, “I don't see Twitter being the next influential social media marketing tool.” She saved me much time with her investigation and I thank her for it. I'm also impressed that someone decided to step up and say that a popular tool is all hype and no substance. There are too few people who do this in a credible manner so again I thank Jane.

All of this got me thinking about MyBlogLog which I initially considered to be a good idea. Since then I've decided that it wasn't all that the hype made be believe. I now no longer use it and I'm starting to see that others too have decided to move on as if it were just another passing fad. However, at least in MyBlogLog's case I do believe there is potential for it to live up to it's hype especially now that it has the financial backing of Yahoo.

Have you been duped by any hype lately?

Note: Several days after I originally posted this, Chris Garrett declared that he too decided Twitter wasn't all that useful.