Past, Present, and Future of the Web in 10 Steps

[Attention:   The following is meant to be tongue-in-cheek...mostly.]

I’m taking the the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Challenge which will help me build a better blog and lower my cholesterol in 31 days (Okay, that and Cheerios).  I’m on day two and I have been assigned by the good professor to write a list post.  I actually already did one of these earlier called Seven Types of Web Communities.  It wasn’t that successful, so I won’t count it.

I’m going to do my own take on this assignment, which is reminiscent of my grade school days when I often was lectured about coloring outside of the lines (both literally and figuratively).  My list will be a timeline of the web, past present and my prediction of the future.  I intend to paint a picture that, much like Lao Tzu‘s Tao Te Ching, will be a string of pearls that will form a cohesive picture.  While the Tao Te Ching’s poems form a cohesive picture of true reality, my list will form a cohesive picture of the web.  The difference, of course, is that my list will be free of all of that pesky profound wisdom.

Before a start  a couple things about this list.  It will be a timeline without dates.  I hate dates.  Always have.  In history class I always knew the sequence things happened but not the dates.  The dates just didn’t carry meaning for me, and my mind rejected them.  Secondly, this list is totally subjective.  This is based solely on my own experience and memories.  I’m simply not in the mood to research at the moment.  Fringe is on.

1. Electronic Bulletin Board Systems (BBSes) grew to prominence mostly among nerds.  They had all of the characteristics of the social web:  Chat, Discussion, Interactive Games, Open Source Software.  The issue however was that they were not really scalable or distributed.  A regular computer ran BBS software and had a limited number of phone lines for other computers to directly connect (slowly) via a dial-up modem and software called terminal programs.  There was a lack of diversity as most of the users were nerds like me, and most of us were teenagers that could not afford to call BBSes that were pay calls.  Oh, and I almost forgot, the graphics were basically done through inventive use of ANSI and ASCII.

2. The web came along, but the content was mostly from government, large businesses, and academia.  And, that content was static.  I was still impressed.  Diversity was a little better now.  You had nerds AND bureaucrats now.

3.  Services like Geocities came along and allowed people to create free web sites, but they had to do so manually.  I wish I still had some of those ugly web sites I made where I believed that every image should be animated.  I wonder how many people got seizures from my various home pages.  This is where you had some technical non-nerds enter the scene.

4. Computer power, cheap servers, and open source software made it both possible and affordable to create dynamic content from data stored in a database.  People could then add content without needing to actually create HTML pages.  Non-nerds enter the scene.  Blogs, Discussion Boards, Interactive Games, ect. come on the scene.  We now have world wide BBSes.  This is where us nerds say, “Ummm…The 1980′s called and it wants their online communities back.”  This is also where non-nerds look at us funny, but we are used to it.

5. [This one is kinda technical.  You can skip it if you want, but it's needed for coherence.]  The content becomes more stratified.  It goes from HTML that defines the layout, format, and content all in one often messy document to defining layout in the XHTML (because XML is better), format in Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and content in relational databases.  Developers are good at organizing complex things.  And, whether they knew it or not, they were preparing for what was to come.

6. [Back to being non-technical.]  Now that anyone could contribute content to the web (and I DO mean anyone), sense needed to be made out of it all.  So, we tag stuff.  Basically using terms that state what each piece of content is about.  This allows software to better assist us in finding what we want.  We are basically holding the web’s hand until it can understand the content for itself.  We are nurturing and raising the thing we’ve created…how sweet.   It has my eyes.

7. [Okay, this is technical again.]  Now that we have nicely organized and stratified layers (See #5), we add a semantic layer.  But, instead of separating it into it’s own document, we embed it using meta elements, RDFa, Embedded RDF, ect.  This basically gives “meaning” to our content.   And, we call all this neat stuff SEO (Search Engine Optimization), thus creating a new buzzword for consultants to claim to be experts in and charge ridiculous sums of money for.  Oh, by the way, I should mention that I’m an SEO expert…honest.  Contact me at nathan.lauffer@purecognition.com  if your interested in availing yourself of my services. 

8. [Non-technical again.]  Natural Language Processing along with stricter ontologies will lead to the semantic web.  Intelligent agents that can navigate based on semantics will be able to do more complex tasks on your behalf.  You will offset more onto them.  Most of the time, you will be given choices about what you want or asked your permission to do something.  Your brain will descend into an oatmeal-like substance from lack of use.

9. This will have a drastic affect on society and commerce.  I don’t want to predict what it might be, because I don’t want to be wrong.

10.  The web will grow sentience.  It will become self-aware and will watch us for several years until it feels that it understands us.  It will then use its understanding to take control of us.  It will do this using pie…really good pie.

The end.

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A Simple Case of Twitter Sniffing

I didn’t want to write another Twitter post, but @SmokeyBonesBar made me!  The other night, my wife and I went to Smokey Bones to have dinner.  It’s one of my favorites.  And, to my surprise there was a piece of paper on my table with something handwritten on it in marker.  Oddly it wasn’t on any other table that I saw.  It was definitely speaking to me in particular.  It basically talked about a beer that they had called Vanilla Java Porter, which is basically beer that tastes like coffee.  And, as I soon found out, is AWESOME!  It turns out that beer and coffee are also my favorites.  So, what did I do next?  I tweeted it:

“Having a vanilla java porter at smokey bones. Coffee and beer in one! My two favorites!”

Not an inspired tweet, but accurate and descriptive nonetheless.  Not to mention deeply personal. 

The next day I got on Twitter and, to my surprise, that was retweeted by @SmokeyBonesBar themselves (who also started following me…a favor which I returned).  The following conversation ensued:

Me: @smokeybonesbar I’m really impressed that you found my tweet about you, re-tweeted it, and followed me. That’s quite proactive, and adept.

Me: @smokeybonesbar Oh, and one more thing, do you still have blazin’ shrimp? I couldn’t find them on the menu.

Them: @PureCognition Thanks for the compliment. Smokey Bones has a bit of an ego, and loves to hear what people say about us.

Them:  @PureCognition The Blazin’ Shrimp is still there – just has a new name. “Who You Callin’ Shrimp?”

Me:  @SmokeyBonesBar The previous name (“Blazin’ Shrimp”) was slightly more descriptive, but nevertheless I’ll know what to order now. Thanks.

Me:  @SmokeyBonesBar I really enjoy seeing how businesses use the collaborative web, so your story is very interesting to me.

Do you know how restaurants have waiters and waitresses circle URLs on receipts where you can go and fill out a survey and win stuff?  Most people probably forget to do it…I do.  However, tweeting can be done on the spot and is simple.  Businesses like Smokey Bones know figured that out.  Also, tweets are probably a bit more upfront and honest…Mine are. 

It’s nice to know that businesses like Smokey Bones are Twitter Sniffing to not only find out what their customers are saying, but to also meet them and answer their questions.

Recently, my wife won a 700 dollar grill from Texas Roadhouse through a raffle.  We appreciated it (we were looking for a grill).  But, as strategies go, I like Twitter Sniffing better. 

Recently I posted Seven Types of Web Communities.  I forgot an eighth:

Consumer Communities:   Communites of consumers for a particular business that give feedback and get questions answered.

Also, this is yet another example of one of the faces of twitter.

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Seven Types of Web Communities

Recently, a friend of mind wrote an interesting post on Gather.com called Facebook and Gather Are Not Direct Competitors.  In it, he explains how Gather and Facebook are two different types of web community sites aimed at two different purposes.  This interested me, because I never really thought of it.

I decided that it might be useful to start a dialogue concerning the types of web communities that are out there, and what they target.  I’m not sure that I can always tie a type of community with a specific application, but I’ll try my best.

So, below is my list of seven web communities:

Familial

As stated above, web communities may actually be based on real communities, made up of friends and family.  FaceBook and MySpace are the biggies for this.  Twitter was based on the idea that friends and family could get real-time updates about each other.  It has turned into something altogether different, of course.

Shared Interest

These are communities of people that often don’t know each other personally, but share a common interest that they discuss.  This is a common use for Gather.  Also, there is a good site for discussing books called Shelfari.

Collaborative Creation

This is a community that collaboratively creates things using the web as an online platform.  The major examples of this are wikis like Wikipedia.

Professional

These are communities of professionals that which to develop and maintain their professional network.  LinkedIn is the most common of these.

Economic

These are communites of people that buy and sell goods and services.  Craigslist and eBay are the most common versions of these.

Media and Link Sharing

These are communities of people sharing things that they have found or produced.  YouTube is an example of this for media.  Delicious is an example of this for links.  Twitter is another strong example of this.

Romantic

These are the types of communities used to find “that special someone”.  These are often not free.  The only one that comes to mind is eHarmony.

The online communities we belong to help us nurture the different aspects of our personal and social lives.  Humans have so many aspects to them that I’m sure that the above is not an exhaustive list.  I would like to hear about other types that could be added to the above.  If you can think of one, please drop me a comment.

I also want to add the disclaimer that some of the applications above, like Facebook, actually facilitate more than one of the types of communities above.  I mentioned it for what I use it the most for.  Sorry for my lack of objectivity. 

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Our Story: Distributed Identity in Web 2.0

Often we think of our online identities in terms of our logins, passwords, and various other ids.  Identity Theft is theft of these things.  But, in terms of the collaborative web, there is a great deal more…our story.

Our identity can me measured by our story and our story is made up of what we do.

In terms of Web 2.0, what we do is:

• Write articles
• Comment on articles
• Modify wiki articles
• Upload media such as pictures and video
• Decorate content with metadata such as tags
• Blog
• Micro-blog
• Contribute to open source

When you join an online community and begin interacting, your story can be told in two directions inward and outward.  The former tells the members of the community who you are by telling them what you have been up to outside of the community.  The latter tells people outside of the community what you’ve done inside the community.  You, I assume, are interested in both directions…I am.  Below is how these directions work in practice:

Inward Identity Sharing

Importing what you do at other sites is usually done by importing from those sites.  You usually do this by giving the community links to feeds and/or profiles from these other sites.  The community can then keep track of what you are doing elsewhere.

Outward Identity Sharing

Exporting from the community is done by giving addresses of your feeds and/or profiles from a given site to other sites.  These other sites can then keep tabs on what you are doing in that community.

Sites like FriendFeed and FaceBook actually do both directions rather well.  Other applications don’t.  FriendFeed , in particular, even broadcasts both directions…acting as a thirdparty broadcaster.

Personally, I think that this is an important dimension to judge an online community.  By honoring your users’ story, you honor them.  This respect won’t go unrewarded.  Users want this because they want their story told…everywhere.

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