2990 LinkedIn Profiles Explains Why WebRTC is not Hyped Enough

If anything, WebRTC isn't hyped enough. It is time to drop the act. There is no hyping of WebRTC. I am monitoring a lot of data points with relation to WebRTC, if there's anything to say about them in the past 2 years, it's that they aren't showing any acceleration or deceleration - all these metrics I am collecting are growing at a moderate linear pace. Something I did recently for a couple of webinars, and will show again in my own presentation for the Kranky Geek WebRTC Show, is to look at LinkedIn's profiles and WebRTC in them. A quick search on LinkedIn for WebRTC (and a few other terms), ended up with this slide in my presentation:

Ouch. Only 2990 LinkedIn profiles that have the word WebRTC anywhere in them. Compare it to VoIP, with over 847,000 profiles with that word, or HTML that has 3,900,000 profiles? WebRTC is laughable at best. You're looking for hype? Check out Big Data profiles: there are 494,000 of them in LinkedIn. What is acutely missing for WebRTC is mind-share. There are a lot of WebRTC events out there today, but if you check them up, you'll notice that they all come from one side of the house: Telecom. When it comes to web/internet events, WebRTC will get at most a single session there, usually with the presenter later on writing in a post that we was shocked most of the developers in the room never ever heard of WebRTC. WebRTC has a lot more potential for the web than it does for Telecom. For Telecom this is just another access point and a huge headache as it reduces barriers of entry for new players (not something you'd like as a vendor in a 100 year old industry). For this to really happen, there needs to be a lot more awareness out there. If WebRTC it hyped today, then it is in all the wrong places. To that end exactly, I am running the Kranky Geek WebRTC Show with Chris. We're investing a lot of time in bringing speakers to talk about WebRTC to web developers. Not to product managers. Not to VoIP engineers. To web developers. Our purpose? To increase awareness about WebRTC where we think it is sourly lacking. It is a drop in the ocean, but at this point, it really is the best thing I can do for the situation to improve.

Why is this important?

WebRTC is here to stay. There are enough indications today that Apple and Microsoft will be joining in on the party at one point in the future. Maybe not in the current way WebRTC is specified, but they won't leave this industry to Google alone (and Amazon, now that they have their own shiny brand new Fire Phone). As adoption and availability of the technology grows, so will demand for developers to implement use cases on top of it. There are around 500 companies I am monitoring these days. There are definitely over 2990 people who know WebRTC enough to have it in their CV. If you are a developer, and you are looking for a talent that has demand, then WebRTC just might be the thing for you. If you are looking for a developer, then this is going to be hard to come by. If you are already doing things with WebRTC, then I suggest you go freshen up your LinkedIn profile a bit - make it part of it - you never know where is that going to lead you in the future.