What’s Next on the Web?Web Technology Trends for 2008

and Beyond

Presented by:

Richard MacManus, Editor, ReadWriteWeb

• http://www.readwriteweb.com

• Daily coverage of Web Technology news, trends & products

• Lead blog in RWW Network; others are Last100 (digital lifestyle), AltSearchEngines (search), ReadWriteTalk (podcast show)

• ReadWriteWeb 10th most popular blog in the world (ref: Technorati)

• Founder & Editor: Richard MacManus

• RWW team: Alex Iskold, Marshall Kirkpatrick, Josh Catone, Sarah Perez, Bernard Lunn, Corvida Raven, Steve O’Hear & Dan Langendorf (last100), Charles Knight (ASE), Sean Ammirati (RWT)

Web 2.0

• Read/Write, two-way, anyone can be a publisher• Social Web• The term “Web 2.0” defines an era; like “Dot Com” • Search (Google, Alternative Search Engines)• Social Networks (MySpace, Facebook, OpenSocial)• Online Media (YouTube, Last.fm)• Content Aggregation / Syndication (Bloglines, Google

Reader, Techmeme, Topix)• Mashups (Google Maps, Flickr, YouTube)

Image credit: catspyjamasnz

What’s Next? (Web 3.0)• Web Sites Become

Web Services – “Unstructured information will give way

to structured information - paving the road to more intelligent computing.” (Alex Iskold, ReadWriteWeb, Mar 07)

– Examples: Amazon E-Commerce API, del.icio.us API, Twitter API, Dapper, Yahoo! Pipes (scraping technologies)

– Pages not center of Web now, Data & Services are

– 90% of Twitter activity happens through its API

• Intelligent Web = data is getting smarter (ref: Nova Spivack, Twine, Oct 07)

– Semantic Web– Filters / recommendations– Personalization

• Beyond PC - mobile, IPTV, physical world integration

Semantic Web• Machines talking to machines• Making the Web more 'intelligent’• Tim Berners-Lee: computers "analyzing all the

data on the Web‚ the content, links, and transactions between people and computers.”

• Bottom Up = annotate, metadata, RDF!• Top Down = Simple

Image credit: dullhunk

Top-down: • Leverage existing web information• Apply specific, vertical semantic knowledge• Deliver the results as a consumer-centric web app

Semantic AppsWhat is a Semantic App?- Not necessarily W3C Semantic Web - An app that determines the meaning of text and other data, and then creates connections for users - Data portability and connectibility are keys (ref: Nova Spivack)

Example: CalaisReuters, the international business and financial news giant, launched an API called Open Calais in Feb 08.

The API does a semantic markup on unstructured HTML documents - recognizing people, places,

companies, and events.

Ref: Reuters Wants The World To Be Tagged; Alex Iskold, ReadWriteWeb, Feb 08

More Semantic Apps

Other Products to watch:• Twine• Freeset• Powerset• Talis• TrueKnowledge• AdaptiveBlue• TripIt• Spock• Quintura• Hakia

Ref: 10 Semantic Apps to Watch; Richard MacManus, ReadWriteWeb, Nov 07

Open Data• Data-driven Web• APIs, Portable data• Making data available on the Web via APIs, web services, open data standards• “Data silos and walled gardens are a huge loss of opportunity and more people are

figuring that out every day.” Marshall Kirkpatrick, ReadWriteWeb, January 2008

Social Graph• Social networks slowly opening up: OpenSocial / Facebook Platform --> Social Graph --> Custom Social Networks?• Brad Fitzpatrick: "the global mapping of everybody and how they're related”; Ref: Brad Fitzpatrick, Aug 07• Alex Iskold: “…it will take a lot of work to get a working solution. The challenges are conceptual, technical, political, business and educational.”; Ref: Social Graph: Concepts and Issues; Alex Iskold, ReadWriteWeb, Sep 07• Tim Berners-Lee: Third main "level" of computer networks (Giant Global Graph):Internet --> Web --> Graph. Ref: RWW, Nov 07

Social Networking Arms Race

Google vs Facebook

• Competing APIs:

Google FriendConnect vs Facebook Connect • Google: MySpace, Yahoo!, LinkedIn, Ning, Orkut• Facebook open sourcing its platform: any social network can implement Facebook applications

Ref: The Social Networking Arms Race, ReadWriteWeb, May 2008

Open Data:Products & Standards

Open Data Products• Google's Android mobile OS; will be available for any phone manufacturer to install and build

on top of• Data remix products; e.g. Dapper, Yahoo Pipes• Mashups; e.g. Last.fm mashups use Audioscrobbler - "a massive database that tracks

listening habits and calculates relationships and recommendations based on the music people listen to."

• Lifestreaming apps (personal data aggregation and publishing); e.g. Tumblr, Jaiku, Onaswarm, MyBlogLog, FriendFeedRef: Lifestreaming: a ReadWriteWeb Primer, Jan 08

Open Data Standards• Data portability - taking your data and friends from one site to another. Check out

DataPortability.org• OpenID- portable identity; single sign-on• OpenSocial - Google initiative for social networks, enabling developers to create widgets with

one set of code; MySpace a member, Facebook isn’t

• APML - growing ‘Attention’ standard; Your Attention Data is all the information online about

what you read, write, share and consume

Mobile Web• Portable• Location-aware• Integrated with physical world• Always on, always carried, built-in payment model,

mobile phone is a creative tool at point of creative impulse, gets the most accurate audience info. (ref: Tomi Ahonen, Oct 07)

• Google, Yahoo, Microsoft all ramping up their Mobile Web efforts (e.g. Yahoo Go platform)

iPhone• Revolutionary Mobile Web UI (multi-touch)• Runs OS X, Safari = can view full websites in the

browser on a mobile phone (not WAP!)• Desktop class applications• Rich HTML emails (competitor to Blackberry)• 3G version rumored for June 08• Ref:

Boom! iPhone Rocks Tech World, ReadWriteWeb, Jan 07

Mobile Web Apps5 Essential Mobile Web AppsAs chosen by RWW readers, Nov 07:

• Gmail Java app for mobile phone

• Google Maps for Mobile

• Opera Mini

• Fring (VoIP, IM)

• Shozu (send media to Web)

Twitter• Best Mobile Start-up, Crunchies Awards 2007• ReadWriteWeb’s Best Web LittleCo of 2007• Micro-blogging; mix between blogging and chatting; short updates, “140 characters or less”• Niche now, but potential for mainstream: “It is the coverage of news events and the continued emergence of citizen journalism that will push Twitter toward the mainstream this year.” Josh Catone, ReadWriteWeb, Jan 08

Recommendation Engines• Given a set of ratings for a particular user, along with

those of the whole user base, come up with new items that this user will like

• Personalization is driving it

4 Approaches:• Personalized recommendation - recommend

things based on the individual's past behavior• Social recommendation - recommend things

based on the past behavior of similar users• Item recommendation - recommend things

based on the item itself• A combination of the three approaches above

Ref: Rethinking Recommendation Engines,Alex Iskold, ReadWriteWeb, Feb 08

Recommendation Engines - Examples

• Amazon, Netflix, last.fm, Pandora, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us are some of the most popular

• Last.fm music recommendation community sold to CBS for $280M & StumbleUpon sold to eBay for $75M; both in May ‘07

• Ref: 10 Recommended Recommendation Engines, ReadWriteWeb, Feb 08

Strands• Invested $55 million so far• Aims to “to lead the social recommendation industry”• Currently music discovery and social networking site that covers the PC, mobile and physical worlds• Mission: “help people discover new things”• Working on open data formats for describing user taste data; may also use APML?

ReadWriteWeb Resources

• What's Next on the Web: a ReadWriteWeb Toolkit for 2008

• 2008 Web Predictions

• 10 Future Web Trends

• 10 More Future Web Trends