Phil Wainewright wrote an excellent post recently entitled The great Web 2.0 application (s)mash-up. He starts by quoting Mohan Sawhney, professor at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management:
"Five years from now, the concept of an application will be obsolete," Sawhney said. "They will all be services, combined, mixed, matched and reused as needed."
Phil goes on to discuss the merits or otherwise of the various "services" vendors lining up to be the dominant platforms and marketplaces in Web 2.0. Note that he particularly focuses on Enterprise markets, whereas my interest is more in the consumer/media markets. But there are crossovers - e.g. Amazon, which has been very quiet this year compared to the other big Net companies, has filed a patent for a web services marketplace (it was filed last year). Phil doesn't sound convinced - yet - that any of Amazon, Google, eBay, Microsoft or Yahoo will necessarily lead the services ecosystem.
He then quotes my post a couple of weeks ago about a 'Publisher Services' company being a dark horse in all this:
"Finally, there are the left-field players, many of them as yet unknown or not considered as potential platforms. As Richard MacManus recently wrote, "Publisher Services has a lot of potential and it may well be the category which delivers the next Google." He was writing specifically about RSS, but the notion applies equally well to all on-demand services, not merely RSS. In the Web 2.0 economy, service publishing and aggregation of all forms is where the greatest opportunity lies."
Emphasis is Phil's, but of course I agree. Disappointingly, nobody took me on about that bold claim I made (I was looking forward to a spirited debate). But I always like to back the outsiders in a horse race. So I'm sticking with my prediction that a 'Publisher Services' company will become a big platform player within a couple of years.
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While I agree somewhat , I feel that Web 2.0 services are still a long way from client inclusion. It is still too complicated for even some providers to get their heads around and unless a simpler solution (Not that it reall can get any simpler) it will remain in the realm of high end service providers and B2B services. Just an opinion of course.
Posted by: Web Design Ireland | September 28, 2005 4:28 AM
Ah, but it's getting simpler all the time. And the big prizes will go to those platform companies that make it as inclusive and simple to use for regular folks as possible. :-)
Posted by: Richard MacManus | September 28, 2005 5:02 AM
Well, I agree with that, but where does that leave the small business'? Do we also have to wait for the big fish to make things that little bit simpler for us then we can market to the "less educated on the subject"? I have explained the concept to many of my friends and colleges and many are completely confused over RSS, and rightly so. People fear change and while I understand it relatively well, it took me a while to grasp (I don't know why!). I just think there's a long way to go. Integration with Windows Vista I feel is a step forward, but lets see how well and user friendly they integrate it.
Posted by: Web Design Ireland | September 28, 2005 5:27 AM