I recently spotted a nice New Scientist article charting the early days of Google’s new Chrome browser. The article shows two public domain graphs – one is the Google Trends search volume, indicative of social excitement and interest. The other is browser uptake – real progress data – from GetClicky. Here’s what they look like:
No measure is a pefect proxy for ‘expectations’ – the variable on the Y axis of the Hype Cycle. However these are pretty good. It’s by adding the two together (matching the spikes) you would form the rough shape of the early part of the hype cycle. Normally we would would expect the uptake of a new browser to gradually rise from here and then taper off at some point in the future – the classic adoption S curve. That would complete the Hype Cycle shape. (see here for Gartner’s official first take on Chrome)
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1 Google trends and hype cycle? at michaelweiss.ca // Jan 11, 2009 at 11:21 pm
[...] a short article on Google trends that suggests to a comparison to the hype cycle model. Seems that the guys from Gartner agree. In the blog on Mastering the Hypecycle, they quote a New Scientist article that traces the uptake [...]