2008 - Data, Semantics, Attention

As 2007 rolls to a close, bloggers have started predicting the hot trends of 2008. Data, Semantics and Attention seems like a consistent theme.

Here are some highlights:

Richard McManus (here):

Semantic Apps will become popular in 2008, due to their ability to get better content results and make better data connections. Think search engines like Hakia and Powerset, wikipedia-like efforts like Twine and Freebase, and apps that use semantic technologies under the hood.

We look forward to being involved with the Engagd platform and APML.

The big Internet companies will surprise us all by embracing open standards, and attempting to compete with each other with features instead of data lock-in (OK, this could just be wishful thinking!).

We have already seen Mozilla move in this direction with Weave. Google with OpenSocial. Hopefully 2008 will see true openness with use of existing standards such as those listed at DataPortability.org

Marshall Kirkpatrick says (here):

The value of recommendation engines will become all the more clear; the era of data will be celebrated.

People engaged in the new web will do some really awesome stuff that we'll all be in awe of.

He writes in a post about the future of RSS:

For anyone who reads feeds, though, prioritization and personalized recommendations are two things that hold a whole lot of promise.

In 2007 both Bloglines and Newsgator were among the companies who moved towards implementing a simple, open Attention Data standard called APML. A wide variety of other companies began experimenting with other methods of systematizing and automating prioritization and recommendation as well. Expect this to be even bigger in 2008.

Web 1.0 was about Pages, Web 2.0 is about People, Web 3.0 will be about data.

Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins dedicates a whole section to APML (here):

You're going to see bigger partnerships emerge, along that same token, between the APML movement, the OpenID movement, and the big dogs like Microsoft, Facebook and Google. Remember that whole privacy debacle called Beacon? At some point real soon Zuckerberg is going to realize that to keep that very vocal minority of people who like privacy quiet, he's going to need to give them better ownership of their profile and attention data - APML and OpenID will provide ways for this to happen.

Josh Catone writes:

OpenID will be adopted by more startups and larger web companies, but most people (mainstream users) still won't use it - that's a couple of years off.

Perhaps DataPortability will help drive the value proposition.

Alex Iskold writes (here):

Implicit applications, which monitor our habits and automatically infer our likes, will rise.

Looks like 2008 will be an exciting year!

Look forward to working with you all in the near year.

Facebook Stirring Up Anger For Disabling Accounts

According to Techcrunch:

"As if Facebook didn't have enough to worry about, now it may have a growing customer service problem on its hands. Facebook members whose accounts have been disabled - some with good reason, some not - are increasingly frustrated with the company's opaqueness when it comes to trying to figure out what they did wrong. They find that their accounts have been turned off and access to the site and
all their data is denied, sometimes without so much as a warning. Facebook's customer service reps, who can only be reached via e-mail and are understandably overstretched, are apparently not very responsive."

Facebook is turning into a textbook case of why users must own their own identity and data.

2008 will be the year of the Portable Social Network, the DNS of Identity and the rise of the lifestream.

Stay tuned...

The end of arrogance?

Tara, Chris and Ben from CitizenAgency are three of my favorite people in the bay area. During our visit they embodied the positive, insightful and supportive attitude we found there. From offering their office space to connecting us to their friends who could help, they were true champions of community spirit.

Tara recently posted her 2007 Predictions and as usual, they were less about Technology and more about community spirit.

Click through to read the list, but my personal favorite is this:

Those with little humility will have to eat it
What is with the lack of self-reflection in this world? I’m not only talking about the tech world. It happens everywhere. We are not gods, people. We are human. And we screw up. And we don’t know everything. Let’s stop trying to be the tough guy and protecting our sand castles and just work together towards a better world. We all have ego, but it’s knowing how to let it go that makes us great. (Oh…the prediction part of this is that, like Keith Teare’s fabulous De-Portalisation post, we’ll have our niche audiences and mutual respect communities forming while the braggarts/big dogs continue to fight one another to the death…Keith didn’t say it, but I see the parallel. I like living in the foothills).

I have long held a strong personal distaste of arrogance, ignorance and apathy. Listening to someone - especially someone who has passion - not only takes very little time, but could also help you succeed at your own endeavors.

Oh and of course there is the prediction that reinforces our own world view here at Touchstone...

This will be the year of connected desktop apps
Not that web apps won’t continue to be produced like mad…I mean…really…they are so simple to produce, aren’t they? But those beasts of apps (one reader once said, “Code in C++? F&#* that!”) on your desktop will start not only being ‘connected’ to the web, but interacting with it, too.

Welcome to 2007

Welcome to 2007. Happy new year!

Let's get straight into it.

Last year (Dec 19 to be exact) the clever people over at Read/Write Web published a list of their Web Predictions for 2007. Here is a very cut down summary with my annotations added in italics. Please note the full version from ReadWrite Web is far richer so make sure you click through and check it out.

RSS, Structured Data

• RSS will go mainstream in a big way next year
  Touchstone will provide a way for the mainstream to more easily understand and consume the value proposition of RSS. Particularly those who don't understand why RSS differs so much from email untill they see it scrolling across their desktop like a ticker or urgent/important headlines SMSed to their phone. Taking the 'RSS' out of the RSS experience will be pivitol.
  
• Structured data will be a big trend next year
  RSS is the most common form of semi-structured data out there. Microformats, however, will begin playing a very important role. A reader that can apply actions based on attached or embedded microformat data will be very useful.
  
• Widgets exploded in 2006 but will continue rising in 2007
  Web widgets are cool. They help create a loosely coupled web experience with functionality exposed all over the place. Desktop widgets, on the other hand, can just be a mess on your desktop. How many widgets can you look at while you work?

Enterprise

• Web Office continues to ramp up
  Touchstone will play a pivotal role in helping knowledge workers get alerts when their web-based office apps have new events/actions that need taking care of. The overflowing enterprise email inbox will not surive the influx of email if web-based office apps send an email for each of their alerts and updates.
  
• The consumerization of the enterprise trend will start to infiltrate corporate IT, in the form of web-based office apps and more collaborative systems.
  The participant (read: user/employee) is the most important part of any system. The fact that the web and web-based sofware is starting to realize this reality is a welcome change. As enterprises begin to catch up, tools that help individuals manage their own attention will become mission critical.

Web Development

• Rich Internet Apps will be a major force in 2007. The general trend going on here is that platforms that leverage both the desktop and the Web will be compelling next year, in terms of offering rich functionality that usually can't be found on purely browser-based apps.
  Exactly right. Ajax is great, but it still can't reach beyond the browser sandbox. Client-side applications will, for the foreseeable future, play a very important role in the mix.
  
• On the other hand, Google in particular will continue to push the boundaries of browser-based apps.
  And yet they continue to build client-side applications as well. Google's only real successes however have been in services that use search/maths as the main value proposition (e.g. web search and email with search). Google has yet to have a real success at anything else including their web-based office apps or their fabled emerging GoogleOS.
  
• Semantic Web products will come of age in 2007.
  Semantic just means structured - and the most important structured format is already here. RSS combined with Microformats make the semantic web an emerging reality. Yet most readers treat RSS like news. Touchstone will force a change.
  
• Expect more big things from Amazon next year, to fill in the stack and to provide the foundation for a Web/Amazon WebServices-based OS.
  

Search and Online Advertising

• Expect some shakeups in the online advertising market next year.
  Maybe engagement will get some real consideration?
  
• Also due to ongoing issues with (CPC/PPC) online advertising, there's a real need for a better, more robust online ad model - perhaps something more than CPA. So watch out for developments in 2007 along those lines.
  
• 2007 will be about Search 2.0 and the rise of the vertical search engines. However don't expect Google to lay down and do nothing - they will counter the verticals.
  Google has already launched their custom search engines which is actually a clever way to get users to tag sites with categories. They can then build vertical searches based on this massive amount of accumulated data. They are using us to build their next killer app. Has anyone else noticed? I'd love to know about posts highlighting this fact - post in comments. They once again use our 'Attention Data' for their master plans. I just wish they were more transparent about it.
  

Microsoft vs Google

• Microsoft's Windows Live services will gain real momentum next year, thanks to Vista and also Live services.
  Surprise, Surprise. Microsoft will always use its platform and tools to drive adoption of their latest round of products and services. They did it with the browser, media player and portals and they will continue to do it for whatever they do next. When you control the keys you control the rooms that people use. You'd do it too if you were in their position.
  
• WebOS /GoogleOS: To counter the Vista and Windows Live threat, Google may come out with some form of GoogleOS.
  Refer to my previous statements about the GoogleOS in this post.
  
• Open Source Desktops will continue to gain momentum in '07.
  Getting a growing number of users while maintaining a consistant share of the overall market is not really a sign of success.
  

Browsers

• Browser War II. In 2007 expect the competition between IE7 and FireFox (plus Flock, Opera and Maxthon) to be intense.
  The browser wars were declared when Microsoft realized that IE can actually be beaten by Firefox and announced their renewed focused on a more aggressive update schedule for Internet Explorer. Expect the war to rage on for the foreseeable future (long past 2007 - think of it like a console war now).
  
• Speaking of browsers, 2007 will see an increase in WebKits. Adobe's Apollo will be WebKit based, enabling developers to ensure Safari compatibility as well as other browsers.
  I am not yet convinced about WebKits and hybrid applications. The web tool vendors want us to believe that web developers can build better client-side apps using web-tools/languages than more traditional platforms like .NET and C. Maybe that's true. Maybe it's not.

Multimedia

• Internet-based TV will ramp up in 2007, thanks to products like Brightcove and whatever Google does with YouTube/Google Video.
  Online distribution of TV/Movies is long overdue. Buying DVDs has been a scam perpetrated on the unsuspecting masses for too long. HD-DVD and BluRay look like they are going to extend the rain of crap for a few years more. All content should be delivered over the Internet and on-demand.
  
• Mass adoption of IPTV technology in 2007 and Bittorrent will be an important part of the online video landscape too.
  IPTV might be dead on arrival. TV over IP (important distinction here) will always be better. It's amazing to me that Bittorrent is not already integrated into browsers and used for distribution of medium to large files. Hopefully 2007 will see that happen.
  
• Virtual worlds: SecondLife will become an important platform for marketing, promotion, and of course social networking.
  Or they will collapse as people realize that they are closed platforms and go in search of more open environments based on technologies analogues to HTML.
  

Consumer Apps

• The online real estate market will grow rapidly in '07.
  
• The search for disruptive business models will continue! :-) In other words, free consumer web apps still need to find a business model.
  Or die trying
  
• While social networks dominated 2006, we wonder if the amount of time an average user spends online will start to negatively impact on their social lives in 2007 and lead to a downturn.
  Tools that make Social networks available on the go will be critical. Messaging inside walled gardens like MySpace will have to give way to more open messaging/forum systems and alert routing technologies (I.e. Touchstone).