What’s Next on the Web?

1. What’s Next on the Web? Web Technology Trends for 2008 and Beyond Presented by: Richard MacManus, Editor, ReadWriteWeb

2. 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)

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. Semantic Apps • What 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: Calais Reuters, 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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

12. Mobile Web Apps 5 Essential Mobile Web Apps As 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

13. 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

14. 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?

15. 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