peace on the web, too

This is the first article (hopefully) in a series trying to expose some of my ideas about the content available on the internet, it’s evolution, it’s status, it’s future. I know people have wrote about this, perhaps the more important is that I understand myself better this thing called internet.

*Fragments.1*

Everything we write or publish is made up of fragments. Or items. Or bits. Whichever you like the most. The idea is that we conceive things as parts that belong to ensembles (is this English?). My blog is made of posts, which are made of paragraphs, which are made of text containing links, which points to other sites made of items … You get the picture.

You cannot grasp an idea if you don’t study or understand its parts. Except perhaps philosophy (which I am doing righ now :D) or arts like music or drawing (thoough for the music I can see a similar pattern of notes composing an _aria_ etc.) where the fragments are more closer to be atomic. Atom meaning something that _for the time being_ is not decomposed into smaller fragments.

I got thinking (so deep ! ;)) about this because of the microformats idea. I wrote about this before and it still fascinates me. I think a lot of the “web 2.0″ hype is pushed on because the web developers realized they can use the information available on the web to present it one way or the other to the user. The purpose of all is to allow users find and understand an information with its context the more quicly and conveniently possible.

Everything goes around this. Google’s search algorithms, Technorati’s blog search and tagging system, flickr’s pictures syndication, online mapping systems’ API availability, Amazon’s API, anything that was a “web hit” has do to with this.

In the beginning we only had links. A link is a tag that points to an information. Which can be a site. Which contains some text and some links, to other sites … Etc. This is the low level of the web.

Now, ten years after, we have a babylon of websites, static or dynamic, driven by a CMS or manually edited, with 10 or 10 millions users. Chaos. How can somebody find something in this? Yahoo and then Google tried to fix this by using super speed techniques and algorithms and indexes in order to bring everything on the web on their side, allowing them to present any information to the user _quickly and conveniently_.

Now the web people realize that this is or becomes impossible. And looks at the web at the low level again. Bu the low level is much more interesting now. The content begins to gain *structure*. Partly because of the automatization of the web publishing, partly because of the tools we use everyday. The standardization efforts of w3c and other organisms begin to make a difference.

Think about the CSS. It was supposed to help designers split content from look and now it gives people ideas like the microformats. Because after using it for designing the interfaces, people realized that they were using CSS classes corresponding to the styled content’s meaning or nature. It is natural to name a div’s class “product” when it contains a product!

So why not use what we already have on the web and try to look at it differently? Why not trying to use this structure emerging from the web’s chaos? microformats are a way of doing just that. Another one (related, but rather _niche_ comparing to microformats) is the structured blogging.

I really like both of these ideas, and I already try to find ways to impose some of those microformats in my projects. It is not easy, we have become negligent and relaxed when it comes to our XHTML content. It is kind of difficult to always try to use this ot that format. Very often the proposed formats are not complete or not perfectly adequate. Like hReview. It looks good. But for me it looks like a web shop item but incomplete. A web shop item _is_ a review of a product. But the actual hReview format doesn’t include enything needed for products. Of course, we can add tags to it. Perhaps this is the way to go, I don’t know. But it become soon clumsy and unreliable. At least right now I see it like this.

Anyway, I am convinced this is the way to go, find formats, apply them whenever you can, try to use standards. The second part of this will try to focus on reasons why we should doing this, but for now think only about the first web pioneers. What if we had right now something like 3 or 4 major web formats? Like HTML, LOLO, JOJO and MOMO. Which don’t communicate with each other. You see, HTML enabled all of this. And the “a” tag linked it all together.

*Further readings*

[1] “microformats.org”:http://www.microformats.org

[2] “XML.com: What Are Microformats?”:http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2005/03/23/deviant.html

[3] “XML.com: Microformats and Web 2.0″:http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2005/10/19/microformats-and-web-2.0.html

[4] “Microformats - Wikipedia entry”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microformats

[5] Josh / Bokardo: Structured Blogging: “Who is Benefitting and How? “:http://bokardo.com/archives/structured-blogging-who-is-benefitting-and-how/

[6] Paul Kedrosky’s Infectious Greed: “Structured Blogging Will Flop”:http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/002215.html

*Intro*

Following all the “web 2.0″ discussions on the web (see memeorandum.com for the latest), a thing struck me: people always talk about how the “web 2.0″ sites (aka web applications) will _work_ and _integrate_ with each other. Almost no one knows or even talks about how the simple, everyday websites will evolve, how they will be affected.

*Today’s websites*

* Portals (including search engines)
* Content sites (5-10 pages, static), perhaps with a CMS as a backoffice
* Dynamic websites and/or CMS-driven websites
* Dynamic web applications (webshops, B2B/B2C, enterprise tools)
* Media sites - like music, video, photo etc. Difficult to put them in any of the other categories, they just seem to form a type of their own.

*The website, version 2.0*

We can start our look at the “new web order” by observing that the portals and the search engines become more and more _services_. They provide _functionality_ for a browser “consumation” or are integrated in mashups to provide new services that provide new functionalities to be consumed … etc. [1]

The content very often doesn’t belong to these services, it is provided/bought/added by the users of the service (tags e.g. flickr’s, comments e.g. amazon user comments etc.).

Anyway, what I want to talk about is the “web 2.0″ company website. The “web 2.0″ blog. The “web 2.0″ CMS, shopping site, community site etc. How these “normal” websites will be affected in a “web 2.0″ world. Will we be considering those “web 1.0″ websites as “normal” in the “web 2.0″ world?

(OK, we don’t know yet what “web 2.0″ is, nor its world etc. But I think it is more important to try to foresee or understand how the “mr everybody’s” website will evolve in the future, rather than trying to define the environment first. We’ll only take for granted that in the “web 2.0″ world, the _web is a platform_.)

*Structured content*

To start with, it seems clear that _every_ content available on the web today can become a part of a web 2.0 site content. People are only beginning to understand this. It could explain the hordes of CommonCreative-like licenses we see on a lot of sites (blogs) these days. This kind of use will produce some changes on the rules of the game. At some extreme, we can even see Google paying for each search result a small fee to the target site’s owner :) it seems extreme though.

But _structured content_ could be the next big thing. A lot of sites are already structuring their content because of using CMS-es or other backoffice solutions. So the new aggregators should be able to “see” what a small website has to offer merely by scanning it and understanding it’s content structure.

Imagine you have a small webshop, no shopping cart, perhaps even no CMS, but your designer/developer has put the effort to repeat the same structure whenever he updated your news or products pages. This is big. This means any site can offer links to all your content categorized in news, products etc., exactly as it is on your website, by merely parsing your site.

Now imagine that when searching with a search engine (for example) or when browsing an aggregator site, a user could see a shopping cart “injected” on top of the content coming from his search. Beacause he/she searched a product, the search engine presented the top 10 hits for the search and

And that the user could just add to the cart links found with google representing some products from your website. And that google could allow this user to send his “shopping cart” to you by email. Google could find your email from your contact page (which is structured, right? ;))

In this area a lot has been said and done, but only recently the semantic web and microformats memes had become visible on the web related discussions. The idea is that you already have a structure describing the date on your website. This structure is composed by the CSS classes you use in your XHTML and by the names of a page’s design elements. I think it is really a _disruptive_ idea.

Perhaps not everybody will agree on the same structure for the same content, but at least we can think of XHTML as of a structured, repetitive, content representation. And this is only the beginning.

*The Web’s Long Tail*

The new web will look more and more like the thing the web creators dreamed about. Information running free form site to site, presented in different forms on different devices. It’s like we have built only the web’s scaffold till now. Now the pipes connect to each other, phones are installed in the building and internet arrives :)

There will be no more websites. Only services. No domains, only subdomains. No centralized point for a content. My tags everywhere, my ideas everywhere. In fact I will not _have_ anything personal or private unless licensed or protected as such. Mean people, go attack everybody’s content …

All the websites waiting out there to be linked-in, searched, served and mashed-up are forming the web’s Long Tail.

*Who wrote this thing?*

One of the biggest problems will be to determine to whom a specific information _belongs to_. Or who must be paid for providing it. This is where the succesfull web 2.0 companies will prove their web 2.0 model. Who will be able to identify the “network”?

For example, I write this post. It gets published on my blog. In my feed. On any online reader of my feed. And then it becomes available to anybody in the world through a rather big number of sources, caches, searches etc. How can I find out who reads it? How can I make somebody pay for reading it? When this will be clear, we will leave in the web 2.0 world :)

*Web 1.1 sites*

For now, we can use some web sites and services that test this web 2.0 thing. We can use google maps mashups, flickr or msn ones. We can tag things in delicious, read blogs through feeds etc. It is not really the web 2.0. Is the web 1.1. The stuff begins to be structured, the pipes unpacked, the trucks bring materials and everybody thinks how to grasp this thing.

*Conclusion*
This is the image I have right now about the web now and fo the near future, unclear and open as it stands. Maybe I am just realizing the possibilities out there, maybe I am cured after the last bubble, maybe I’m just enthusiastic. Whatever. Just go out and have fun and learn. The web will help you.

*Further readings:*
[1] “zephoria.org: remix is active consumption not production (when media becomes culture, part 2)”:http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2005/10/08/remix_is_active.html
[2] “O’Reilly: What Is Web 2.0″:http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html
[3] “Web 2.0 Explorer | ZDNet”:http://blogs.zdnet.com/web2explorer/
[4] “Read/Write Web”:http://www.readwriteweb.com/
[5] “Adaptive Path essays | Experience Attributes: Crucial DNA of Web 2.0″:http://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000547.php
[6] all the sites listed on “web20workgroup.com”:http://www.web20workgroup.com/

I will try to keep a (short) list with the blogs that point here.
Hopefully when I will become famous and all google searches will start with a link here I won’t need this anymore :D
Disclaimer: these links are gathered using google, feedster and icerocket blog search engines, is not exhauustive and there is no particular order.

• ajaxdeveloper.org
• affiliate-marketing-diary.blogspot.com
• kbcafe.com/RMail
• georrge.blogsome.com
• munjal.typepad.com
• spaces.msn.com/members/realgeek/,
  realgeek.blogspirit.com
• horsepigcow.com

It’s rather short … I think it’s Friday :p

(From an IM conversation today with my brother , translated from romanian and slightly edited.)

…

mapopescu: my blog stagnates at 15 readers :)
mapopescu: what is interesting is that I only have to see the feedburner statistics to feel the need to write something, as if I would have a debt to my poor subscribers :)
georrge: you realize how it is when you have a number of 500 visitors in a week?
mapopescu: wow

…

mapopescu: all this soupe of tags and feeds gives me a headache. everything is cool. but seems upside-down.
georrge: you are very right :p
mapopescu: I mean they are used in the wrong way.
georrge: I don’t think it’s the wrong way, we’re in the research perriod right now and it’s normal to move in any possible direction

…

mapopescu: my opinion - that I began to write in a post but didn’t publish yet - is that we must reconsider everything. if it is to be the “web 2.0″, we must see what a “site 2.0″ is. e.g. what this all means for a auto service website? what it gives more than it already has? how a website of an “everyday normal casual people” will change?
mapopescu: or the blogs. they drive me crazy the most.
georrge: you’re not thinking right here
mapopescu: why?
georrge: why a website must be completely web 2.0?
georrge: a site or a product must be a product in the first place
georrge: the used technology only helps it to be competitive
georrge: it doesn’t define it
mapopescu: well, it shouldn’t; I was only thinking why someone would update their site from 1.0 to 2.0 ?
mapopescu: what would be interesting in the change?
georrge: :D
georrge: it will be difficult
georrge: because the web world is not ready for the web 2.0 yet
mapopescu: exactly, I think the whole web 2.0 gibberish didn’t found its subject yet. everybody turns around the bone without seeing it.
georrge: take for example the search engines
mapopescu: :D
mapopescu: the “normal” guy shouldn’t give a damn about all these
georrge: when google will get web 2.0 items in its search and use them
georrge: then it will kick everything for at least 5 years, my take
mapopescu: the google’s problem is bigger
georrge: because it is big
georrge: now they practically investing in all sorts of ideas
georrge: and they watch what it comes out
mapopescu: google doesn’t know yet how to put ads in the feeds :D and how to search and how to rank all those feeds and posts, like they did with web pages
georrge: but their approach is rather coherent
mapopescu: I’m not seeing it yet. they are fighting, but I don’t know if they saw the light just yet :p
georrge: I mean they see everything as a search key
mapopescu: yes, this is right
mapopescu: but look at gada.be it’s more cool, more usefull in a way that a google search, which right now is rather noisy

…

georrge: well, everybody tries to see right now what this web 2.0 exactly is
georrge: and this is why the market is rather blur
mapopescu: it can be whatever one wants it to be. but the big guns will be new ideas, stuff impossible to do on the web 1.0, which is more natural for the everyday people than the web 1.0 style.
georrge: yap
mapopescu: a recent idea I read somewhere: “fuck the domains :D vive les
subdomains :D”
georrge: =))
mapopescu: why we should all get a 0 level root node. if I have a couple of
mapopescu.*whatever*.com it should be enough
georrge: the address is not that important
mapopescu: exactly
georrge: only the content matters
mapopescu: it would be cool to see the domain registration numbers for the last 2-3 years. if they went down or up.

..

mapopescu: after all the madness, in the end we’ll all have a server for each connected device. web server, content server. and then we will use public services with data coming from the private server.

…

mapopescu: http://erikbenson.typepad.com/mu/2005/02/using_bloglines.html
mapopescu: this link, you must see the result. is rather aseptic and lame ;) but it is cool that from a couple of sites you can assembly a single page
mapopescu: probably the guy doesn’t yet clearly see what and how to assemble and he leaves it as a list for the time being
mapopescu: this is the result: http://hello.erikbenson.com/
mapopescu: check the result, the guy takes what himself has put on a couple of sites, passes them as feeds through Bloglines and gets them on his own PC using the Bloglines’ API, where he presents the whole thing as a blog
mapopescu: this is what I was talking about
mapopescu: I will probably do something like this for me too :)

…

mapopescu: - I don’t know why everybody is so incoherent about this web 2.0 thing. In fact we should all return to the roots. We must free the content. We must put a wire to see whee it came from. And then we should let the show begin :)
mapopescu: - Revolution. Now!