What’s Next on the Web?Web Technology Trends for 2009

and Beyond

Presented by:

Richard MacManus, Founder & Editor, ReadWriteWeb

• http://www.readwriteweb.com

• Daily coverage of Web Technology news, products & trends

• Other ReadWriteWeb properties: Enterprise Channel (enterprise web apps & trends), Jobwire (news on tech & media job hires), ReadWriteTalk (podcast show)

• ReadWriteWeb is among the 20 most popular blogs in the world (ref: Technorati)

• Founder & Editor: Richard MacManus

• RWW team: Bernard Lunn (COO), Marshall Kirkpatrick (VP Content Dev), Alex Iskold, Sarah Perez, Frederic Lardinois, Rick Turoczy, Lidija Davis, Sean Ammirati

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, Hulu, Last.fm)• Content Aggregation / Syndication (Bloglines, Google

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

Image credit: catspyjamasnz

What’s Next? (Beyond Web 2.0)• 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 Web in PracticeSemantic Web in The Real World- 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

Semantic AppsProducts to watch:• Calais• Twine• Freeset• Powerset• Talis• TrueKnowledge• AdaptiveBlue• TripIt• Spock• BooRah• Hakia• Dapper MashupAds

Ref: 10 Semantic Apps to Watch - One Year Later and 10 More Semantic Apps to Watch; Richard MacManus, ReadWriteWeb, Nov 08

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 OpenSocial

vs

Facebook

• Google OpenSocial: MySpace, Yahoo!, LinkedIn,Ning, Orkut, Salesforce.com, Oracle, more…• OpenSocial: 675M registered users, 7,500 apps (Nov 08).• Facebook open sourcing its platform: any social network can implement Facebook applications• Competing APIs: Google FriendConnect vs Facebook Connect • Let’s not forget MySpace: Data Availability and New MySpace Profiles

The Social Networking Arms Race,ReadWriteWeb, May 2008

Open Data:Products & Standards

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

of; Android went open source Oct 08; first phone released Sept 08 in U.S.• 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, Soup.io, 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!)• Apps galore; Desktop class applications• Rich HTML emails (competitor to Blackberry)• 3G version released July 08, along with App Store• Ref:

Boom! iPhone Rocks Tech World, ReadWriteWeb, Jan 07

Mobile Web AppsMobile Web Apps ExplosionMobile Web Apps & Sites; ReadWriteWeb, Nov 08Examples:• Google Maps for Mobile• Opera Mini• Fring (VoIP, IM)• Shozu (send media to Web)• Facebook iPhone app

Twitter• ReadWriteWeb’s Best Web LittleCo of 2007• Micro-blogging; mix between blogging and chatting; short updates, “140 characters or less”• Used a lot during US elections• “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

Pic: drumsnwhistles

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• Nine Recommendation Tools We Wish We Had, ReadWriteWeb, Nov 08

Strands• Invested $55 million so far• Strands has created a social recommender engine that is able to provide real-time recommendations of products and services through computers, mobile phones and other Internet-connected devices. • Working on open data formats for describing user taste data

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