I always find trends interesting.  TechCrunch has a great blog post today that shows Internet trends (using a Morgan Stanley report).  In a nutshell the report shows that social sites are dominating with respect to user traffic.  Being a business to business kind of site, Achievant doesn’t necessarily fall into the same bucket as such sites, but I think there are lessons to be learned.

We all want traffic to our sites whether our sites are the company intranet dolling out the latest company news, or a marketing site pimping the latest product or a consumer site selling the latest must have widget.  Whatever basic human need is driving people to YouTube or Facebook is the same human need we can tap to bring people to our sites regardless of their function.

If you’re trying to get your employees to read the latest policy on this, that or the other thing and you can’t get them to stop on the intranet’s home page, maybe adding something social (as the trend shows) will bring them in.  If you’re trying to sell widgets it would appear a widget forum where the general masses can leave their two cents worth would bring traffic your way.

As a developer of websites I find the trend pointing toward the next iteration of a user interface.  These social sites that hundreds of millions of users hit each month are being hit by the same people using Achievant’s HCMS.  The user experience on these sites frames the expectation of the user for our site.  We probably won’t ever have video sharing or a friend tracking widget, but we might have forums or a look and feel that is less business and more social.