Social Startups for Techcrunch50 2010

The Gartner Hype Curve 2009 is out, (see picture above courtesy Spigit Blog) so you can now see those trending "hot" areas for you startup to be in time to burst out of Stealth Mode in time for September 2010's TechCrunch 50:

On the Rise are (and our expert explanations in brackets):

- Alumni Community Management (Niche Socnets)
- HCM and Social Software (HCM FTW, RIP HR?)
- Persona Management (e-PR)
- Socialcasting (Twitter Egosystems)
- Customer-Centric Web Strategies (Because current web strategies are not, of course......)
- Social Mining and Social Intelligence (What Google actually does do)
- Mobile Video (that's been Next Year's Great Mobile Hope every year since 2001 I think )
- Activity-Specific Social Applications (aka there's no real money in general purpose SocNets)
- Crowdsourcing (didn't this peak 4 years ago, is it time to come round again?)
- Enterprise Internet Reputation Management (Listening on Twitter for complaints)
- Idea Marketplaces (User Generated Ideas for exploitation)
- Social Media Marketing Platforms (Sometimes, in 100 years, media changes etc etc)
- Social Networks for Sales (See above)
- Social Learning Platform (Go For Grants)
- Private Virtual Worlds (not enough Pron on Public ones??? )
- Distributed Social Web (For those who don;t have Twitter, Facebook, email, IM, etc etc already?)
- Social CRM: Community Marketing (Not Crowdsourcing nonono)

At the cusp (ie if you haven't broken cover now its too late) are:

- Social Profiles (now renamed Persona Management above)
- Activity Streams (Twitter - been there, done that)
- Social Data Portability (Yeah, its worked well so far - not)
- Social Media Consulting (Social media Experts are sooo 2008 dahling)
- External Community Platforms (Mo' Grants)
- Mobile Social Networks (Twitter on mobile)
- Social CRM: Customer Service (as opposed to Antosocial CRM: Customer Service)
- Expertise Location and Management
- Social Software Suites (Drupal does it now.....0
- Microblogging (Did someone say Twitter)
- Social Tools for Retail Websites (Gee, we need a Forum and a Blog)

Sliding into the Trough - down the razorblade of startup life to the Deadpool if yours hasn't taken off:

- Prediction Markets (Who coulda predicted.....)
- Social Search
- Internal Community Platforms
- Open-Source Social Software (Er - did someone say Drupal?)
- Social Bookmarking (Like, who uses Delicious anymore, man)
- Public Virtual Worlds (Did someone say 2nd Life)
- Immersive Learning Environments (
- Social Network Analysis (Bollocks - this field has hardly started....ah wait, its been renamed above)
- Folksonomies/Social Tagging (Awaiting the Semantic Web....still)
- Idea Management (PLease n ow be calling it Idea Marketplaces)
- Social Media Monitors

Now, the ones that are climbing out the Trough of Despond, ie may have some value are apparently:

- Wikis (no sh*t? Most of them make Lotus Notes look easy to use)
- Corporate Blogging ( or Blagging, as it is becoming better known as)
- RSS in the Enterprise (ummmm.......)

...errrm - value?

Well, there we are. Ladies and Gentlemen, start your engines for 2010. Who knows, there may even be some money around.....