Tom Coates of Yahoo Brickhouse (ex-BBC) is over in Wellington for Webstock, giving a talk on the Web of Data. I've been a fan of Tom's Web theories for a long time, so it was great to see him speak live.
He starts by saying that the companies that have done well on the Web (Facebook, amazon, flickr, twitter, dopplr, etc) are much more than websites - they've broken out of the browser/page and manifesting themselves elsewhere (devices, other sites, etc). Moreover, they're all platforms and have benefited as a result; and some have made lots of money.
He says a "web of data" is where data sources and services are the center of the Web, rather than pages. So, he says that "your site is not your product". Twitter is his first example of this - you can use and access it on many different services and devices. He says that 90% of Twitter activity happens through their API (see our previous coverage on this point). Flickr is another example - it manifests itself in screensavers, badges, Moo cards, and "mashups in every direction". Last.fm, says Coates, is much more than a personalized radio website - it collects data on people and that becomes manifested though widgets, badges, etc.
MOO - can print photos from services such as Flickr
The world of tomorrow? It will become "more bizarre and weird" as the Internet touches more things. He gives 3 examples:
1) A physical object responds to or visualizes data from the network.
2) Interacting with a physical object allows people to change data stored in the network.
3) A physical object acts as a sensor that writes to the web of data.
He talks about Nabaztag, a network-enabled rabbit toy. Ambient Orb, Wattson, Weather Underground ("like last.fm for weather") are other examples. He also points to AppleTV - "one of the few mainstream physical network appliances available". See last100's recent review of Apple TV.
So, when you're building a new web product it must play well with others - "it's good to design for recombination". Coates asks: what are the opportunities for your product if it can play well with others?
Weblogs and RSS are the technological background for all of this. He says this was the first step in the consumer web - where data is discoverable and explorable. Since then apps like delicious and flickr have expanded on this. So why open up your data? Coates lists 4 reasons:
1) Drive people to your service
2) People will pay for it
3) as advertising or to put yourself in the middle of an ecosystem
4) Make your service more attractive with less central development (eg flickr)
He says the main reason though is: network effects. New services can build on other services/data, and this makes the overall ecosystem more powerful. Oakland Crimestopping is an example.
Coates then talks about Fire Eagle, his latest project at Yahoo Brickhouse. Fire Eagle is described on its website as "a new way to share your location with friends or with other websites and services". It's all about geo-coding and the idea is for developers to "build all kinds of applications that respond to your location". Coates says that Fire Eagle has "APIs in two directions", so you can do geo-presence applications. He says that while the Fire Eagle site itself doesn't necessarily do much, other services can use the data and create powerful apps.
Coates next point: you can never have too much data. He follows up by saying that hierarchies can't take the weight - so we need to move to "weblike exploration". This latter point seems to complement well Peter Morville's theories about findability. Amazon is a great example, says Coates. They have moved to manifest their data outside the categories, into the pages themselves. i.e. Amazon used to have tons of tabs, but now you can explore its data from inside Amazon webpages (and in other services too). For example the "people who bought this" feature, tags for books, and Listmania. So, he says, top navigation is now just a jumping off point - there are lots of other ways to explore data nowadays.
As always from Tom Coates, an enlightening presentation - with many things for designers and entrepreneurs both to take away. The interesting thing for me about watching this presentation is how many real world examples Coates now has to back up his theories. When I first began following Coates' blog Plasticbag (and sadly he no longer writes long-form posts on it, just links), he was ahead of his time and - as he himself noted in this talk - only blogs and RSS were really representing the Web of data. But now we have many mainstream web companies with products that demonstrate the Web of data. And there is a lot more to come, as the Internet permeates real world objects and different devices.
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Please, please post video of this talk and share the coordinates. Even better, come give it live at Mozilla the next time you are in the Bay Area. kthxbye. :-) Share This ... Read More
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Interesting that he mentions Nabaztag - I've only heard it ridiculed. :) But it is apparent that the Internet is fast becoming a utility of sorts. We take for granted that electricity and running water are easily accessible 24/7 from just about anywhere, and soon it seems the wealth of information on the Internet will be similarly transparent. Part of the key to this will be making it transparent - i.e. not slapping an LCD screen and a web browser on every appliance, but actually re-using the Internet through other interfaces (e.g. Apple TV or even Nabaztag).
Of course, I find that some outlooks on the future of the Internet overemphasize data. Data is great, important, and very useful, but data alone is rarely enough. Some of the best technologies are about people and relationships, not data. Note the Amazon example - people who bought something. Why are phones so great? They help us communicate with people. Why is Facebook so great? It helps us keep in touch with people.
I think the most important technologies will be ones that not only provide us with data, but make the data meaningful by helping us connect better with others. And nowadays, people often substitute electronic intimacy for real relationships.
Anyways, rather off-topic I suppose, but got me thinking.
Posted by: theharmonyguy | February 14, 2008 7:35 PMFor any ordinary reader/user/blogger/surfer these theories on the development and evolution of the web, can become very confusing.
On the one hand we are seeing efforts for a semantic web, where machines will learn the semantic language of users to better interact with them. It sounds as if the semantic web is trying to redefine the attention economy of cyberspace.
On the other hand we are now reading about the web of tomorrow, which will expand itself out of the realms of cyberspace and interact with the physical world. A goal, which will constitute the cyberspace-real life differentiation obsolete.
Both are great, thought provoking and revolutionary visions. But sometimes I have the feeling the attention span of these revolutionaries is scattered. Instead of individually working on several "web-explosion", why not collaborate and move together to the same direction?
Posted by: roobojiannis | February 15, 2008 12:36 AMroobojiannis, it's a good point. But it goes to show there is so much exciting stuff happening on the Web today. I'm sure in time the Semantic Web will merge with the 'Web of data' - and we're seeing that in a way already with tagging and taxonomies being used together. But actually I like how different things are evolving on the Internet, and eventually will meet up, or something totally new will emerge :-)
Posted by: Richard MacManusGreat post.
Design for recombination. That goes a bit beyond the original 2.0 idea of a site that gets better with use.
Insightful. Thank you.
So you are actually in Wellington? Hope the summer is good.
Posted by: Jo | February 15, 2008 5:29 AM@ theharmonyguy
The essential feature of Gen Y seems to be that they don't split electonic and intimate the way we do. Google Maz Hardey, a young sociologist at York.
I, still do. My life takes over and I drop the web, showing it is more of an add-on for me than a essential grid. I am puzzled though by hotels, schools etc. that don't have wifi as a given. Some British unis don't have online registration yet. Alexa rank www.auckland.ac.nz and www.london.edu (London Business Schoo). Its amazing. Then add www.moo.com, that Richard mentioned. The unis need to get their roller skates on.
I've also noticed that blog traffic plummets on holidays, such as yesterday, Valentine's day. So there is some competition for time.
Great post Richard.
Posted by: Jo | February 15, 2008 5:35 AMThanks for your comments Jo. Wellington summer has been pretty good, altho it was apparently *great* for the few weeks I was on away on holiday! :-)
Posted by: Richard MacManusTo roob - I think the two are actually entirely compatible - in fact that's the point of my talk - that the future that we're looking at at the moment is one where there's a web of data behind the scenes that can manifest in/on and be affected by everything that can touch the internet - whether that be sensors, web browsers, phones or whatever really.
Posted by: Tom Coates | February 18, 2008 10:43 AM