Do Technology Trends Have Their Own Hype Cycle?
Found a neat chart over at TechCrunch on technology hype cycles, pulled from the Gartner Consulting website. For those of you who do not know about Gartner, they are an IT consulting group that are also known for trend research. This stuff is not free, however TechCrunch got permission to post one of their hype cycle charts.
The picture shown at the top is the July 2008 tech hype cycle.
Gartner explains hype cycles here, but long story short there are five phases of a technology cycle:
- Technology Trigger
- Peak of Inflated Expectations
- Trough of Disillusionment
- Slope of Enlightenment
- Plateau of Productivity
I’ll just go over the emerging trends, as they are probably the most interesting and also the most likely of places to find available domain names.
Context Delivery Architecture is a fancy name for WYNIWYG: What you need is what you get. It’s the idea of focusing on an individuals needs and delivering the goods. Though it is quite low on the chart, it’s obviously been around a long time. Perhaps they are saying that we now have the technology to take this to the next level.
Mobile Robots, something I claimed to possibly be the biggest trend of 2008, and perhaps future. (Yea, I know… it’s hard to argue against the green machine).
Augmented Reality, as defined by Wikipedia, is the combination of the real world and the digital world. For instance, one could wear translucent glasses and through them see the real world, as well as computer generated images that project onto the real world. TranslucentGlasses.com and TranslucentGoggles.com were available, I picked them up.
Surface Computers started hitting the news last year where Microsoft announced a division dedicated to bringing these to the masses. Surface computers can recognize things you set on top of them, such as paint brushes, your finger, plates, whatever. They are aiming at hotels, retail establishments, restaurants and public entertainment venues.
Cloud Computing is one of the more popular tech trends at the moment. “Cloud” confuses people; just think of it as “Internet Computing” or “Online Computing.” It’s a combination of many internet technologies, but mostly software as a service and web 2.0. Your G-mail, a place where you store your emails online, is a perfect example of cloud computing.
3D Printing has actually been around a long time, but recently has been picking up steam. Personally, I find it boring and almost totally useless. At least so far…
Microblogging is a huge trend right now, thanks largely to Twitter and partly to Pownce. Some businesses are catching on and using microblogging and instant messaging to communicate in the workplace. Large social networks, like Facebook and LinkedIn, have incorporated microblogging into their platforms.
Green IT is the practice of using computer resources efficiently.
Of course, this is just one company’s point of view. But I still find it quite interesting and full of material that I can research and find domain names.
Are there any technologies that you think they left out? If so, where would you put them on the hype cycle?
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Social Trendcasting Site Is Great Tool For Domainers
Ran across a nifty site today; I have no idea how it slipped by me. It’s called Edopter.com and they brand it as social trendcasting. You are able to browse and follow trends, even submitting some yourself (requires free registration). As a member, you can comment on submitted trends and even help hype them. You are given credit for discovering trends and can give credit to others.
The popularity of a trend can rise and fall, and it will show you the difference from the previous weeks popularity.
The site does use information that you enter to help define trends. For instance, you enter your date of birth, zip code and gender upon registering. The site will keep track of the trends you submit and support. So if a certain trend is wildly popular among 20-24 year old men, the site will say that.
I spent a good deal browsing the site and found some interesting trends and clever start-ups. A few examples:
- Spikeball - Like volleyball, only different… just $50 and enjoyed by males ages 25 to 30 from Chicago. Being the curious fella that I am, I checked in with Google Trends. The trend report for “Spike Ball” supports this claim. Check out the cities: LA is first, with Chicago second. Pretty neat. (ChicagoSpikeball.com is available Spikeball is the name of a product, not a sport. So it’s trademarked)
- OLED’s - Organic LED’s are more efficient and powerful.
- Coworking - The idea of work-at-home employees getting together in a community area such as a cafe or a shared office.
I even found one related to domaining: Backwards-spelled domain names. Sorry, not sold.
Taking a look at the most popular trends and you will see a watered down list of obvious things like the iPhone, Obama, Apple, Firefox, etc. The real treasure is found from browsing the trends.
Plenty of stuff here for domainers to sniff out. Some of these trends are quite early, which is a great time to get in on it. Let’s go back to the Coworking trend: If people are searching out comfortable places to work, a directory could be worth building. How much competition will you have? LocalCoworking.com is available.
Check the site out, spot anything that has potential?
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Labor Day Recap: Vinyl Wall Art Is Now My Top Search Term
Nice to have a day off! Good luck to people being affected by Gustav today and the upcoming days. Being in Houston, what has happened to New Orleans could just as easily have happened to us.
Back on June 21st, I revisited trends from previous posts to see how they were doing. Well, I’m doing it again. I won’t bore you with a recap of every post, but there are a few I wanted to go over starting with the most important one:
Aug 11th - Vinyl Wall Art
I never would have expected it, but the vinyl wall art post has become my most popular post of all time in just under 3 weeks. Not because domainers love it or are linking to it, but because of loads of organic traffic. Vinyl wall art is my number one search term now, even higher than domain related keywords (geodomains is second, in case you were curious). I suppose that’s kind of embarrassing for a domaining blog to admit.
But I think this shows how hot this trend really is. And to give you an idea of what people are typing to find vinyl wall art (at least the ones that got to my site):
- vinyl wall art
- vinyl wall designs
- vinyl art
- vinyl wall
- vinyl sticker wall art
- uk vinyl wall art
- big wall art
- vinyl people wall art
- vinyl wall art home
- how to make vinyl wall stickers
- vinyl wall art blog
- vinyl wall looks real
- vinyl for wall art
And these are directly related to my suggesting that ’80s vinyl wall decals were going to be a big subniche:
- nes vinyl wall
- star wars vinyl wall decals
- star wars wall vinyl
- wall decal big nickelodeon commercial
- ghostbuster wall art (yea, for real)
- mario vinyl wall art
- andy warhol wall decal (Hate to say it, but I told ya so!)
Yea, people really typed those in to get to my blog. Perhaps I should change my focus? hehe…
If TrendDomaining.com is ranking real high for these keywords and people are clicking on them, then the supply is not meeting the demand. Hint hint.
Aug 14th - Olympics
I said that Michael Phelps could do for swimming what Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods did for basketball and golf, respectively.
Of course, it’s too early to tell. But this NY Times report proves this trend is on the right track. From the article: “I don’t want this sport to be an every-four-years sport,” said Phelps. “In between the four years, there’s really not as much exposure as I’d like.”
Aug 7th - Oil Bubble
Well, on August 7th crude oil was about $118 a barrel. Yesterday, August 31st, it was at $120. Not a burst. But it’s still almost $30 lower than it’s high in July. The price of gasoline has gone down, but it doesn’t seem to reflect the huge drop in crude these past 2 months. That’s because these crude oil barrels are futures; the current price of crude is for Octobers gasoline. So don’t fret, the bubble is bursting, even if the price of gas doesn’t reflect it completely; it should come October. Yes I said “should.” Hurricane Gustav or many other things may have a say in it.
Either way, speculators are moving on to something different. Soon we should start seeing reports of money being pumped into alternative energy like never before.
July 7th - Home Servers and Movies-on-demand Boxes
Of course, not long after I wrote this post, news of a Netflix box hit Yahoo. Genius. Blockbuster announced their kiosk business model, which is identical to Redbox and too little too late. It’s just not enough. Netflix gets it, Blockbuster doesn’t.
Vudu has a sleak new box, but it’s still not comparable to what Netflix has.
I feel that eventually every (fortunate) home will have either a home server, movie box or both.
June 30th - Bamboo
I still think bamboo will be one of the biggest trends of the upcoming decade. It just has so many answers for the world.
Though not a site of authority, here is a post that claims bamboo clothing is the next big eco-trend. Here is another company putting it all in on bamboo clothing.
Bamboo is helping computers go green with ASUS finally rolling out it’s bamboo notebooks, Dell’s Hybrid and SimpleTech releasing these nifty external drives.
Since the post, I was able to pick up a couple decent bamboo names:
- BambooRoofing,com
- ShopBamboo,com
Grab bamboo domains now while they’re cheap.
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Tattoos And Piercings Are Just Two Elements Of The Body Art Trend
I’ve had this article in my vault for about a month now. Since I saw a company I was going to write about included in TrendWatching.com’s latest report, I figured I ought to push this out sooner rather than later.
The company is called ColorOn and the trend it was credited to, in the article, was the “clever convenience” trend. These are things that make life a little easier, even if it’s more of a “want” than a “need.” But this isn’t the trend I’ll be writing about today. ColorOn is also part of the overall body art trend.
I know what you’re saying: Body art is older than oral communication, so how is this a trend? Well first off, regular tattoos and piercings are growing in popularity at a high rate and are increasingly accepted in our culture.
According to the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, 24% of Americans between 18 and 50 have at least one tattoo, as reported by USA Today. In 2003 that number was 15%; an increase of 62% in just three years (this survey was taken in 2006). The survey also found that 36% of Americans ages 18 to 29 are tattooed. The word tattoo hit a four year high in Google searches this year.
You can tell this is a growing trend because employers are relaxing their dress codes to allow for tattoos and unique piercings because it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find employees without them.
And secondly, there are a zillion different creative ways to express yourself as we have more than just tattoos and piercings.
The World Body Painting Festival is happening right now in South Korea. Zimbio is calling it this falls hottest fashion trend. I don’t know about it being the hottest (go goffered hair!), but it certainly is heating up I’m not going to argue on what is or is not art (because it’s the most ridiculous argument ever), but you have to admit that some of those are amazing.
Here are some other forms of body art that are growing in popularity:
- Laser etching on skin.
- Laser tattooing on fingernails.
- Scarification, the art of using a scalpel to carve tattoos.
- Body Branding.
- Hand painting (Pic by Guido Daniele).
I know you guys love the jewels in the teeth, but don’t worry, tooth bling doesn’t seem to be one of the growing body art trends. However, dental tattoos ARE becoming more popular, shown here in Google Trends as tooth art. You probably haven’t seen one yet, so here is a pic from BoingBoing. Creepy eh?
Domain names should be easy to create for this trend. Beyond that, there are several different ways you can tackle sites or mini-sites for body art (other than the obvious general blog or site):
- Rate My Tattoo (or facepaint, or tooth, or whatever)
- Catalog of designs
- Photo sharing site
- Tips and tutorials
This is a reader-oriented niche. People would be more than willing to proudly display/share their art or knowledge of the art. Reader submitted content is free content!
So how far are people willing to go for body art? Trepanation?
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TrendWatching.com Releases July/Aug Briefing, TrendDomaining.com Had A Few Right
TrendWatching.com has posted it’s bi-monthly briefing early this morning. These briefings are free and every domainer should check them out when they are released. It is an essential tool as far as I’m concerned. This edition is INNOVATION AVALANCHE (link fixed), as they claim there is more innovation happening right now than ever before. This report discusses 41 copy-worthy innovative ideas.
This is a great site. I’ve used a couple of their reported trends to register domain names. They have a huge trend report that they put out at the end of every year predicting all of the next years trends. At $800, it isn’t for the average Joe. But it would be a wise investment if you could afford it.
So, if you’re in a lazy mood, here is the Cliff’s Notes version of the briefing:
The first 3 innovative ideas are based on the premiumization trend. You take every day normal products or brands and, well, pimp them. For instance, stylish fire extinguishers or the Hi-Q tire company. Premiumization was predicted to be a top trend in 2008, and it’s living up to the prediction.
Ideas 3 and 4 are hyperlocal trends. Sound familiar eh? That’s because I’ve blogged about hyperlocal dating. They go on to say that we spend 49 weeks a year in our local worlds, making the hyperlocal trends inevitable. I agree 100%.
Ideas 6 through 11 are based on the “crowd” or “crowdfunding” trend. These companies are using scores of people to execute their business platform. From a community-managed brewery that donates one third to charity, to rewarding companies that “do good” with mobs of shoppers. This trend is focused on empowering the public, and there are some pretty nifty ideas listed in this report.
Ideas 12-14 focus on the “FREE” trend. Companies are looking for ways to profit off of free products, and a few of them have made it work. Universities are giving away free notebooks that are plastered with advertising. The students get free materials, the University makes a little profit (or breaks even) and the advertisers get impressions; 96 a semester if you’re counting.
Ideas 15-18 are “ItGredients.” This is predicting the next it-ism in the food and beverage industry, such as red espresso; made from red tea and much healthier than regular espresso. Also featured: chocolate covered ants. Yum. They also talk about high-end juices. I almost wrote a post about high-end juice a couple months ago. I figured it wasn’t a trend that domainers could not capitalize on enough to warrant a full post.
Ideas 19-23 are “Tryvertising.” Along with premiumization, this trend was expected to be one of the biggest for 2008. This is another trend I almost wrote a post on. SeatGuru is an example; they have detailed info on the seating layouts of commercial airplanes. This will help you choose the best seat for your next flight. Other examples would be a site that helps you find hotel rooms with the best views and restaurant ratings not for restaurants themselves, but individual dishes they serve. That way, you can “try” them out before you actually purchase.
Ideas 24-28 are based off of making radical eco-friendly decisions that can greatly benefit your company. Examples given were pedal-powered street vendors, solar powered kiosks, mattresses made from recycled materials and something I blogged about: First Look. First Look sells detailed reports to businesses that wish to generate their own power using wind, solar or whatever. This can be extra helpful to domainers who are looking for green geodomain names.
Ideas 29-32 are the “Meconomy.” Not only did I think about blogging about this trend, I have a half-written post on it already. This trend is the personalization of EVERY-FREAKIN-THING: Baby movies, M&M’s, magazines, etc. This is a trend domainers would be interested in as you can plop a “me” or “my” on just about any domain name.
Ideas 33-36 are the convenience economy. This trend focuses on doing things faster, simpler and better. Things like bike stations, they say. They also talk about press-on eyeshadow. This is another topic that I have a working post on. It’s not totally focused on eyeshadow, but is about a bigger, different trend.
Ideas 37-39 are feeder businesses. These are businesses that feed off of other businesses and/or trends. For instance, a company that will put your items on eBay for you. Without eBay the company doesn’t exist.
Idea 40 is the “Eco-Iconic.” We’ve gone from eco-ugly to eco-chic to eco-iconic: proudly showing off your trendy, efficient personal eco-friendly goods. They give a solar-powered lawnmower as an example. I’ve I blogged about personal solar power here.
Idea 41 is “Off=On.” The success of the online revolution is leading to many companies taking advantage of it. Some of them are even mirroring the online world in their offline manufacturing processes and procedures. They give a chocolate company as an example.
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