I believe that Cyber Dust falls on the Slope of Enlightenment on Gartner’s Cycle.

To get a better understanding of Gartner’s Hype Cycle, watch this short video.

While he is known for owning the Dallas Mavericks, his entrepreneurial background was in tech. To further his credentials, he is an investor on the popular ABC show Shark Tank, where he listens to up-and-coming entrepreneurs pitch their business ideas. There, he offers real business insight and advice.

Marc Cuban founded this company 5 years ago, at which point, he was already a household name. He had already established the platform, audience, and necessary funding. This would have been the technology trigger.

When it was advertised that Cyber Dust was completely untraceable, confidential, private, and secure, the audience got excited because this was something even Snapchat hadn’t done before. To further the excitement, he even mentions that if the FBI were to raid your house and take your drives, nothing would be found from Cyber Dust, as its content never touches a storage device. Coming from a tech guy, this was ground-breaking stuff. This was the Peak of Inflated Expectations.

Unfortunately, screenshots are all-too-common this day in age. As Cyber Dust gained more ground, a common criticism and MAJOR setback for this app was that there’s no way to ensure screenshots cannot be taken. A statement under the FAQ section in the app reads as follows,

“Currently, Cyber Dust does not completely prevent screenshots from being taken because taking a screenshot is a built-in feature of your device. We hide the username of the friend you are chatting with the separate chat content from the username. We are working on a solution to completely prevent screenshots on the future.”

Though this is not necessarily the fault of the company, this is a huge let-down in terms of maintaining the absolute privacy and confidentiality. Because of this, potential users did not see the point in using the application at all. I would consider this to be the Trough of Disillusionment.

This brings us to where we are today. All things considered, I would say Cyber Dust is in the Slope of Enlightenment. Even though screenshots are a huge issue, Cyber Dust does a better job of maintaining privacy than its leading competitor, Snapchat. The username does not show while messages are being exchanged and more importantly, nothing is ever saved to a drive. That’s right… no resurfacing of old pictures you never want to see again from 5 years ago. Additionally, the world of tech moves at such a fast pace. Because this app is 5 years old and has already had its grand, public introduction by Marc Cuban himself, I believe the app is further along in the Hype Cycle.

Practical Ecommerce named Cyber Dust on of the emerging social networks to watch. Read it here.

https://www.practicalecommerce.com/13-Emerging-Social-Networks-to-Watch