Google Wave and Microsoft's Bing (hate the name for some reason) are both hot topics at the moment in 'shiny-new-stuff-world', although the shine seems to be brighter where Google Wave is concerned. Here's Google Trends take on it in the UK over the past 30 days. You can see where both technologies appeared and the sudden whoosh of interest:
Compare this to the Gartner Hype Cycle:
Looking similar, no? Google Trends as Hype Cycle spotter? Will keep an eye on this as the flurry of Google Wave / Bing-related stuff settles into some kind of real understanding / use. I wonder if these cycles are getting shorter and shorter? Within a week or two, Wolfram Alpha is already old news. I suspect that there are different hype cycles which exist in different groups of Adopters: for the Innovators, the Early Adopters, the Early Majority etc. Twitter had been getting people interested long before the celeb-fuelled boom which has happened in the last 6 months or so... and just as those early adopters are questioning whether or not it's going to die a death.
If we're in a time of exponential change, then how on earth do we ever like and use something long enough to really understand it?!?
