Web 2.0 Indicators: Tracking Buzz, News and Jobs

Pretty much every few months since I started blogging three years ago I have needed to add another category or two to the site. The reason is simply because there are new innovations that are dotting the horizon. Many of them could have a significant impact on marketing communications. Usually, I add a category when the buzz has reached a point where I feel like I will be covering the subject often. For example, last year I added widgets.

Regulars here know I love data. I believe that if you really commit yourself to studying it, you can learn a lot. Two tools - Google Trends and Indeed Job Trends - are both invaluable, especially when you look at them together. You can get a feeling for if a technology is hype or they are really creating new kinds of jobs that didn't exist before. Let's take a closer look at the charts below.

The first comes from Google Trends. It compares a) searches and b) news volume on the following terms over three years: widgets, "Second Life" (as a phrase), blogs, podcasts and RSS feeds. What's interesting is in 2006 searches for Second Life skyrocketed and surpassed searches for the word "blogs." Also notable, news volume for these two terms touched in October, before Second Life sloped back downward.

OK, so clearly we see there's a lot of interest in Second Life and it's coming close to matching the buzz around blogs. So is all this interest in Second Life generating new jobs? Well, no - not yet. The most popular job category by far when you compare these terms on Indeed.com is blogs, followed by podcasts. Second Life hardly even registers.

So what's all mean? Well, the evidence is anecdotal but it appears as though blogs and podcasts, which skyrocketed to prominence in 2004 and 2005, are now mature. They are largely flat when it comes to hype but they are generating more jobs. So with Second Life hype climbing, will it start generating jobs? Stay tuned,