I’ve been looking at the popularity of different tools since Jane Hart published the Top 10 Tools for Learning this week.

What’s interesting is how quickly some tools have made it up the chart, and, conversely, how quickly some tools have fallen.

The new entrants and risers are AI related – of course – but the biggest fallers are social platforms. Seeing Facebook drop 27 and Twitter/X drop 44 suggests there’s a shift in how we are using platforms to support social activity to promote learning. There are many other tools which combine social features with productivity, e.g. Slack up 9, Teams down but still top 10, and it seems this is a shift for how we are using social tools.

I was looking back at some of the research behind popularity and there is a direct link between the pace of adoption and the pace it falls out of favour. Simply put, the longer it takes, the longer it stays. Look back through some of the older Top 10 tools and there are are dozens of tools which, like fireworks, sparkled brightly before disappearing.

The slow burn to popularity takes time, effort, and hard work. But put the work in and you’ll stay popular for longer. However, as we have seen with Twitter/X, there are exceptions which break the rule.