Canadian public relations practitioner Dave Fleet says Twitter has moved through the Gartner Hype Cycle to the point where it will now quickly become unfashionable. In his  Five Potential Effects Of Twitter's Shift To The Trough Of Disillusionment Fleet charts the technology's progress and predicts what will happen next.

Fleet's analysis is on the money. But there's something else going on with Twitter. After a period of stability, the service is changing. Earlier this week the company altered the way users propagate messages – a process known as retweeting.

In other words, Twitter is still evolving. It will probably be a different beast by the time it resumes its progress through the later stages of the Garter Hype Cycle. Or maybe something else will replace it.

Many knowledge workers like Twitter. I'm not a fan.

We'll leave criticisms for another day.

For now let's just say I don't find it as useful as other applications in the social networking toolbox.

Twitter is probably at the peak of inflated expectations on the Gartner Hype Cycle at this moment. And the potential for spam-style abuse is huge.

However, many of my friends and colleagues swear by Twitter so it can't be all bad.

While getting started guides to twitter guide are a dime a dozen right now, this tutorial from CIO magazine is one of the best. It's not gushing and talks about why you might bother and what you can expect to find.

Update: Since I wrote this I've returned to the twitter fold – find me at @billbennettnz

IT companies talk up their products and technologies.

They hire public relations consultants and advertising agencies to whip-up excitement.

At times they convince people in the media to enthuse about their new gadgets.

The media’s search for hot news and headlines can lead to overenthusiastic praise or a gullible journalist swallowing a trumped-up storyline.

None of this is news to people working in the business. The IT industry’s  shameless self promotion has been formally recognised in Gartner’s Hype Cycle.

Gartner noticed a pattern in the way the world (and the media) viewed most new technologies. It starts with a burst of excitement rapidly followed by a sigh of disillusion and, eventually, balance.

This observation evolved into the hype cycle.

Gartner's hype cycle has five distinct phases

The first phase, Garter calls it “technology trigger”, happens when a product launch, engineering breakthrough or other event gets publicity. At first the new idea is exposed to a narrow audience, maybe through the specialist press, and people think about its possibilities. Things snowball. Before long the idea reaches a wider audience and the mainstream media  pays attention.

Soon this interest gets out of control until things reach the second phase, which Gartner calls “the peak of inflated expectations”. The mainstream media is obsessed – expect to see  enthusiastic TV segments about the technology. You know things have peaked for sure when current affairs TV shows and radio presenters pay attention.

At this point people typically start to have unrealistic expectations. While there are successful applications of the technology, there are many more failures behind the scenes.

Once these disappointments become public, the hype cycle shifts into what Gartner poetically calls the “trough of disillusionment”.

Most of the mainstream press will turn its back on the story, others will be critical. Sales may drop. The idea quickly falls out of favour becoming unfashionable.

Some ideas and technologies sink beneath the waves at this point. Many re-emerge in the “slope of enlightenment”. This is where companies and users who persisted through the bad times come to a better understanding of the benefits on offer.

As a rule, the media has lost interest and may even ignore things, the good stuff just happens quietly in the background.

Finally, the cycle reaches the stable “plateau of productivity”. Here the benefits of the idea or technology are now widely understood and accepted.