Web 3.0 Might Be Really Stupid
What are you doing? How about now? Has anything changed since you started reading this blog post? Every story has a who, what, where, when, and why - but the event-driven nature of the social Web may be putting such a premium on broadcasting about what we're doing, that software designed to help us answer important questions like who and why are at risk of being neglected.
Reflecting on the human condition was once a popular past-time. A lot of people used to read poetry, as you may have heard. It may not be the Internet's fault that we're becoming less introspective - in fact the huge amount of activity data we're sharing online offers incredible opportunities for reflection, and for learning more about ourselves. It seems quite likely that we're going to miss those opportunities because our software is focused entirely on doing (and advertising) instead of on helping us think as much as it could. Of course that's much harder to do.
The first version of the web was a navigable network of interconnected pages. The next version was based on easy self-publishing through blogs, video, commenting and the like. Still another big shift is believed to be underway; web applications are enabling and taking advantage of all that content to find patterns. Linked data, semantic analysis, analytics and data mining all form a layer on top of the content-web that could serve as the foundation for the next series of applications and other added value.
Burton Group analyst Mike Gotta wrote a blog post two years ago that articulated both the opportunities and some of the challenges to building meaningful value on top of our streams of aggregated data.
Stream processing systems (and associated analytical components) will become a critical underpinning for much of what is talked about in terms of workstreaming, lifestreaming, attention streams, collective intelligence and so on. Discovering patterns across people, interactions, information, activities and social networks and assessing those relationships is difficult enough. It becomes even more challenging when you also want the results to be communicated in a manner that is contextual, relevant and sensitive to attention (and confidentiality) needs.
Two years later activity streams are far, far more widespread than they were when Gotta envisioned analytics built on top of them. The analytics remain almost nowhere, though. That side of things just hasn't been meaningfully developed. Millions of people are farming for Facebook game makers, who are raking in millions of dollars, but all the social interaction that goes on in this increasingly social web remains otherwise under-utilized.
I want software that will tell me: "On Wednesdays you tend to post messages a lot in the morning, despite the fact that you have a lot of meetings. You post a lot about your health, too. Is work making you feel unhealthy?" Instead we get software like LuckyCal; it's cool but, instead it says to users "I see you're going to Denver next week, can I give you an affiliate link to buy tickets to a concert by one of the artists in your iTunes library?" That's a limited view of life and the world.
When ground-breaking service FriendFeed redesigned its site recently, it didn't build out more analytics than it initially offered each user about who connected most with their content, where their content was coming from, etc. Instead, FriendFeed shut that feature down. The API is still open and so little startups launch projects like FeedStats, but really - that's so limited it's nothing to get too excited about.
Twitter is a great, wide open platform of social data. Content, connections, time and user biographies can all be cross referenced there. The company hasn't allowed for really monster big data extraction for analysis, though.
Facebook is the most closed of all the social eco-systems, but they claim they are opening up. Firefox creator and now Facebook employee Blake Ross recently called our critique of Facebook's lack of openness dishonest but did offer this worthwhile explanation:
I believe it is disingenuous to summarize Facebook as 'fundamentally closed' because we have yet to build an API that would primarily be of interest to researchers and marketing companies. We've opened all of the information that users have granted permission to open, and that most developers have asked for.
Those are telling words. Marketers (and maybe a handful of researchers, though I'd argue that those are pretty important) are the only people who want Facebook activity stream data. Users don't want it. Developers don't, Ross claims. That's sad.
The patterns of activity in that data offer a unique opportunity to learn about ourselves - individually, in groups and as a society. Unfortunately, that opportunity may not be taken advantage of. A better title of this post might be If Web 3.0 Is Poetry, Will Anyone But Marketers Read It? The gleam of contextual advertising has shined so bright that targeted advertising is thought of as gold spun out of the straw of context. Context is being treated as otherwise worthless fodder for the creation of advertising. But the stuff of our lives isn't just a pathway to market to us.
Chris Messina is one of the leaders in the movement to create standards for Activity Stream data, so it can flow from site to site and be processed in interesting ways. It's the processing part that is most "3.0-like." Messina is optimistic. "I've made an assumption that somewhat richer feeds of what people are doing will lead to more aggregate analysis," he says.
"Blake may have a point, but I think the problem is that no one has access to the kind of data we're talking about at scale yet besides folks like Facebook or Twitter. Even FriendFeed is somewhat hamstrung with whatever comes out of these services and they have to try to pick out what's going on, in a somewhat arbitrary manner. Meanwhile, Myspace is trying to be as open as possible to maintain their position in the marketplace, and no one seems to want their data."I think there's a Facebook-sized opportunity to address the areas that you mentioned... to do something more subtle and intuitive based on these streams. We're really far off from it happening because the technology is so primitive still - but i do think that connecting the what that someone did with the why that motivated them will become a huge area of academic research. And yes, marketers will lead the way, and probably get a lot of it wrong. But then someone else (like Apple) will come along and synthesize all this data, and help people make better decisions by looking at everything that everyone else has done in the same situation before them...and then we'll start to see it pay off."
It may "pay off" - but if that just means in commercial terms we'll all be the poorer for it. Cool commercial apps sound great, but if that's all the further this goes that will be a real tragedy. There are technical challenges for sure, but hopefully developers will aim for the sky.
Odd "Fail" pic at top by Flickr user Nimbu.
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Oh, thank you Marshall. You nailed my concern. I use the activity streams of my friends to find out how they are, or what they think, how they are feeling, or what's happening in their lives. I would hate to think all this is just marketing fodder, when it has so enlarged and enriched my life to meet all these new people and learn about them.
Hmm, my quote sounds somewhat trite. I would hope that before we run after monetizing the streams we stop to step back and think about the real value that they could provide for real life interactions. Otherwise, as usual, businesses will try to slice up a pie that's not just NOT fully baked yet, but doesn't even have all the ingredients yet!
We're seeing a piecemeal release of personal data on the web today because we don't know how much we really can or should give up our privacy... and what the consequences — good or bad will be. Over time, I think the frog will get good and boiled but not before it adapts to living in a warmer environment... to extend the metaphor.
In other words, we're still transitioning gingerly from fearing being the phone book to broadcasting everything that we're doing all the time. That's both an exhilarating and confounding reality that is only a mere approximation of where we're going.
My point about marketers getting in the game first is that they're always chasing shiny golden egg mirages, and activities might be one of them. If they actually *add value* (rather than neutralize it), then I think there might be something promising to leveraging activity streams for commercial benefit — situations like Pandora, Last.fm or the NY Times recommendations come to mind. Whether they'll make real money is hard to say, but it's not like anything else is working.
Posted by: factoryjoe.com
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May 26, 2009 7:48 PM
depends on how you define web 3.0 though, still up for debate
Posted by: mike "glemak" dunn
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May 26, 2009 7:55 PM
Thanks for clarifying Chris. It's complicated stuff. Your quote ends on a trite note but overall I think you put it well. And who doesn't want commercial activity to evolve? I certainly do.
Francine, thanks for articulating the human value of this stuff so well in your comment.
Mike, that's a very fair point. I did presume a particular set of assumptions here
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
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May 26, 2009 7:57 PM
Smart post Marshall. Care to predict 4.0?
agreed - you defined your assumptions well in the post, which hopefully folks will read ;)
Posted by: mike "glemak" dunn
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May 26, 2009 7:58 PM
Have to agree with Mike here, not to mention if there is a Web 3.0 it would be more to do with the back end of the web experience as not much has changed. This real time stuff? It's still Web 2.0, who said the era had to end?
Posted by: Brandon Mendelson
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May 26, 2009 7:59 PM
While these are valid concerns, I fail to see what any of this has to do with Web 3.0 (the semantic web).
The semantic web is based around machine learning and computer understanding of context, and has little or nothing to do with activity feeds, social media, and other mainstays of Web 2.0.
Great stuff Marshall
Posted by: Charlie Anzman
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May 26, 2009 8:03 PM
I thought it was a good post Marshall. If lifestream Analytics could teach us about ourselves that would be cool however; would we listen? Commercial the psychographics would be interesting to study.
Re: web versions, I prefer that we just let innovation happen with out 3.0, etc.
Jason
Posted by: Jason Cronkhite
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May 26, 2009 8:09 PM
I believe we are missing something in the definition of web 3.0. If web 2,0 was the introduction of smart applications and the social web, then we are still firmly in web 2.0 land with everything discussed here. The semantic for 3.0 would be a sea shift that resembles that original shift from interconnected web pages to web applications.
I note that everyone including google speaks of monetising = advertising. What if ... what if monetising meant adding such value that users would pay. Monetising = having real customers that pay for stuff.
How about a new layer on top of web 2.0 that might permit users to be in control of their identity and data. We continually dance around this, and roll eyes over it, but why not. What if your identity was under such control by you, that you could use it for online banking, Facebook, and your own blog.
The opportunity then exists to reverse traditional push advertising, and place the user in control of what they see and when they see it.
Maybe I am off base, but to me, that degree of shift is the minimum state worthy of moving 2.0 to 3.0
Thank you for this great post Marshall. As a marketer I can clearly see how Web 3.0 as you have defined it here will initially be most exciting to marketers. Ability to understand intent / motivation behind that "what" is a marketer's dream. I hope however they will seek this information to continually learn from their customers, build relationship and become a relevant resource. Not seek a quick profit. In the long-run, only the former will succeed anyway.
My point is though web 2.0 or 3.0 are important technologically, the concept behind is more significant!
Thanks for great article! The web is moving from 1 to many to many to many in web 2.0. What will the model be in this new form?
I liked your alternate title better. :)
Posted by: Karoli
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May 26, 2009 8:45 PM
Thoughtful piece, Marshall! Thanks.
Posted by: Dawn
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May 26, 2009 9:14 PM
2010web
Posted by: Robert Scoble
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May 26, 2009 9:28 PM
As I blogged six months ago, it's silly to version the web: http://ariwriter.com/top-10-reasons-why-versioning-the-web-is-silly/
I love your title, Marshall.
Maybe to make it less "stupid", we could start by quitting the 2.0/3.0 nomenclature :)
The Wall Street Journal wants the monopoly on Web 3.0, claiming that Web 3.0 is all about the thin client and the iPhone: http://tr.im/web3fail
Ugh. Stupid.
And, I agree with Ari and Tim O'Reilly: the "2.0" in Web 2.0 isn't a version number (quoting Tim): "After all, Web 2.0 was not a new version of the web, but a name that tried to capture what distinguished the companies that survived the dotcom bust from those that survived, and point the way forward for new companies entering the market."
http://d7.allthingsd.com/20090526/welcome-to-web-30/#comment-169
Posted by: factoryjoe.com
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May 26, 2009 9:58 PM
Francine (and others), i think your fears are being realised, but perhaps you don't have to worry:)
It looks to me that services and content are becoming bait. Yes we use Twitter and consume Hulu and share Facebook, and they're really useful to us - but in the patterns of that usage lies the real value.
Media companies for instance, realise they're in the data collection business, and that the content (hate that word btw) that formerly had such a premium value, is now just...bait. And the best bait gets the most fish:)
I think "machine learning" is being oversold here. AI -- even "toy" problems like the Turing test -- is hard. It took decades for a machine to play grandmaster chess, and those feeble attempts to pass the Turing test that aren't totally laughable have no commercial use. Chatbots are at best entertaining.
I'll have to go digging for it, but Nova Spivack was posting some conjectures the other day on Twitter. I think he was saying he didn't believe AI was possible. I disagree -- I'm sure it's possible, just incredibly difficult and maybe not worth the effort when there are so many other things we could do with the massive compute power a truly "intelligent" machine would require.
Hm, I've read, shared and written poetry on twitter and other activity streams. Don't be Caliban cursing your reflection - different people find different things on the web.
Nice article
Just letting you know that your link to activitstrea.ms seems to be dead i.e no DNS entry found
Cheers,
Chris
"...it may "pay off" - but if that just means in commercial terms we'll all be the poorer for it. Cool commercial apps sound great, but if that's all the further this goes that will be a real tragedy." - Marshall Kirkpatrick
No, it won't be just a couple of spammy commercial apps. Fear not Marshall, once all the ingredients are put in to the pie and fully baked, activity streams will fundamentally change the very nature of personal computing forever - I promise.
Most technologies have succeeded when the adult industry has an use for it or sees a benefit.
Any chance for Web 3.0?
Is this your original title for this post? "Activity streams: poetry or nihilism". If so, I like it better than the attention grabbing title now used. I often wonder about the line "between poetry or hihilism", though I wouldn't use "nihilism" but rather "Solipsism". Anyway, great post. Food for thought. See? We are already less stupid because of this...
Marshall,
Are we becoming less introspective? What evidence is there of this?
You say Software could help us think more than it does? Is it not the case that it may well take the thinking away from us? Relying on computers to tell us 'is work making
us unhealthy?' leaves a danger that we leave the thinking and self awareness to computers, whilst also becoming less present, less aware in the process.
-I wholeheartedly agree though that such data shouldnt just be 'a pathway to market to us', that the real potential for analysing this data could be in advancing academic research, literature, policy and practice.
Nice post!
Shane
http://relativemusings.blogspot.com
There must be an opportunity for self-evolving intelligent agents to mine the ridiculous amount of APIs out there.
Anyways in the mean time I found a simply tool that shows me search results from both Google and Twitter side-by-side. It's a step up from either one alone and gives a more complete picture on what I'm looking for!
http://twoquick.com
Very thoughtful post here, Marshall. I like the way you tied together multiple sources discussing the value left on the table from making insights out of the activity. A talk at this year's WebVisions really helped me see the metrics that matter are the ones that describe depth and volume of activity, not as much raw users or page views. Closed feeds are certainly a hurdle for making technologies that can pull actionable insight. Maybe more importantly is the need for people at large to understand what has marketers clawing for more. Perhaps you could kick off some of this understanding with a post that rounds up some examples of how people could be getting value out of their activity streams if the tech existed. :)
I've been thinking a lot about this in particular:
"help people make better decisions by looking at everything that everyone else has done in the same situation before them..."
Perhaps that is the ultimate goal to strive for with technology and interconnectedness? Perhaps through chasing the rabbit down that hole we can learn that push advertising is bad for humans, or ineffective, or the amount of data advertisers would need to collect to make accurate purchasing profiles is totally out of balance with the amount of revenue they would ever see... Perhaps there is a delicate balance that doesn't involve "pushing" products at all.
Example: if one were to look at my twitter stream today they would see comments about chocolate directed to a gourmet chocolate shop @SAHAGUN and while yes, I do love gourmet chocolate, I'm only talking about chocolate to @SAHAGUN because she is real life friend and web client and she gives me chocolate in trade- I can't remember the last time I actually paid for chocolate anywhere- so it would be moot for any ad server to show me ads about chocolate based on my mention today in Twitter.
Even if I was a big time chocolate consumer, any effective monetization analytics would need to understand the intricacies that I would only ever buy unique gourmet chocolate made by small independent shops. Even gourmet chain shops are out of my consideration for purchase. Therefore, it would be totally pointless for Hersheys to spend money advertising to me.
thats cuz myspace sucks compared to others lol
Posted by: Rollz Chamberlain
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May 27, 2009 3:41 PM
This article is a top google hit when searching "stupid" fyi. I was looking for George W. Bush.
The idea that the relationships between topics and terms can be organized and filtered based upon semantics is going to present itself as a barrier to the usefulness of this type of organizing foundation.
Associative memory, or how people hold relations between various concepts in part depends upon culture. Developers and technologists in general fail to appreciate that they're in effect attempting to model human processes. I've known this for three or four years, as I was investigating coding such organization into web apps. I realized that until developers learn how people function, these systems will fail to deliver.
Google search - based on and applied an understanding re: human behavior.
The real-time web, or as I see it the "interactive-web" first requires providing people the means to do just that. In fact that's what you can do with my new project
I'm "postjockey" on twitter and invite nayone interested in these issues to follow me.
Web 3.0 Might Be Really Stupid http://bit.ly/kFrJ3 [from http://twitter.com/marshallk/statuses/1931112064]
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
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June 10, 2009 8:56 AM
Web Siteleri
Great article, I can not wait for Web 3.0 "v"
Web 3.0? I'm just getting my head around Web 2.0! Thanks for the information though, very interesting.
I love your title, Marshall.
In other words, we're still transitioning gingerly from fearing being the phone book to broadcasting everything that we're doing all the time. That's both an exhilarating and confounding reality that is only a mere approximation of where we're going.
GREAT WORK Marshall.
Actually right now i am not ready for web3.0.Thanks for the post.
Web 3.0? I'm just getting my head around Web 2.0! Thanks for the information though, very interesting
the term web 3.0 and web 2.0 don't really refer to the markup language used but more what you do online. web 1.0 is static web pages that didn't adapt to a specific user, while web 2.0 is socially driven and dynamic. Web 2.0 adapt to a specific user to make their experience more personalized. and web 3.0 will be god knows what. more than likely it will still be socially driven bet will somehow be better in some respect.
The beauty of the internet is that it never stops evolving and every person has a different view and different understanding of what is happening and what will happen in the future.
The internet is becoming tied to more and more everyday tasks and becoming more and more a part of everyday life. For every pastime or activity which the internet may take away there is probably a new one to take its place (or a new way to do it).
This is what keeps us coming back to the internet more and more!
Have to agree with Mike here, not to mention if there is a Web 3.0 it would be more to do with the back end of the web experience as not much has changed. This real time stuff? It's still Web 2.0, who said the era had to end?
I'm just getting used to 2.0. I need to get my skates on....
Have to agree with Mike here, not to mention if there is a Web 3.0 it would be more to do with the back end of the web experience as not much has changed. This real time stuff? It's still Web 2.0, who said the era had to end?
And yes, marketers will lead the way, and probably get a lot of it wrong. But then someone else (like Apple) will come along and synthesize all this data, and help people make better decisions by looking at everything that everyone else has done in the same situation before them...and then we'll start to see it pay off
OAuth can only get better thanks to this event.
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