Open Source Infrastructure: A World of Possibilities
I’ve been struck with how (all of a sudden) everyone is talking about and contributing to the world - which I’ve been following and participating in for the last few years.
Whether it be Yahoo 360 or Google Fusion, it seems like everyone is catching up to what I’ve been saying - but putting their own twists and angles on it - of course!
But without a doubt the MOST exciting developments are in the area of micro-content standards. Open Source Infrastructure is coming into being! The mesh of islands of functionality are forming into an archipelago - and the standards are the causeways and bridges!
John Battelle asked me to write something up about this phenomena and so this is it. I hope to lead a panel on this notion at Web 2.0 - presenting a comprehensive picture of an ad hoc conglomeraton of distributed, decentralized entities and standards - all scarily working together in tandem.
The VCs are funding this stuff, entreprenuers are starting companies around it - and if you ask me - it’s really nice to have our own infrastructure coming into place, instead of having to rely upon Amazon, Google, eBay or Yahoo.
We rely upon Brewster Kahle and the Internet Archive for our storage and bandwith at ourmedia.org. And other players will step up and make their contributions as well (Omidyar Foundation and CommerceNet come to mind.) But maybe CNet will join in?
And rumor has it that Microsoft is funding the Identity Gang!
These developments were highlighted at Gnomedex this week - when both Adam Curry and Dave Winer alluded and contributed to - this burgeoning world of open standards and user uptake.
Both Adam and Dave speak eloquently of a world of possibilities - where open standards and cooperation create bottom up swell in the world of distribution, viral uptake and new compelling experiences.
This is incredibly pleasing to me - as they both have had challenges working together themselves in the past - and I was the one who introduced them to each other - many moons ago. But truth reigns supreme and sure enough - everything was fine at Gnomedex and “Kum bah yah” was heard echoing in the hallways.
There was Microsoft making announcements, Tantek Celik and Niall Kenedy explaining microformats, Brian Dear making the rounds in the hallway, JD Lasica rapping our ourmedia, VCs listening to pitches, analysts filing reports and the ever present ‘podcaster’ recording a show.
The whole scene was about micro-content and open source infrastructure (at least from my POV.) Congrats to Chris Pirillo and Scoble for helping to make this all happen!
So now we get to see if all these different forces and efforts can coalesce into some semblence of ad hoc micro-content standards. Lord knows we wouldn’t wanna wait for the IETF or W3C. This has to be a marketplace driven, solutions oriented set of standards for it to succeed and be real.
My short list on the progresss of micro-content standards looks something like this:
- identity - The Identity Gang, the Identity Commons, Sxip, PingID, Midentity, OpenID and LID all seem to be leading towards the same ideals. My brother Kim Cameron is the clear leader here. And he happens to work for Microsoft.
- lists - well here Microsoft has taken some lead, but needless to say SixApart has been providing lists in their tools - for years now. Some lists are Blogrolls (from Blogrolling.com has been there for years) - while other lists, like Wish Lists or Wists specificy ‘item’ oriented lists. De.liciio.us has made the list of links - famous - again. WebJay uses XSPF music playlists. BackPack features ‘To Do’ lists. Tantek was asking “why do we need Lists as a standard when we have OL and LI. I say “cause they’ll be typed“.
- reviews - Alf Eaton has been the pioneer in this area with RVW, but the microformats folks have also heavily jumped into this game. PubSub’s Structured Blogging also features Reviews - so it’s clear we have a ballgame in this area. We just gotta make sure that local Reviews are segregated from Global Reviews - and that we cover all the different kind of stuff people wanna create. As I’ve said before “10 times more people will write Reviews than blog.”
- media - we have a great start with ourmedia.org and mRSS is also a great start. How cool is it that Yahoo is helping us out here? Thank you Brad and company. Can you imagine if there were Flickr APIs for audio and video? What if we all finally got our act together and took care of our OWN media standards - instead of deferring to my former company (burp!) and/or Microsoft and Apple. I spent my first life playing that game - and time has come for us to throw off the shackles of BigCo’s and take care of ourselves.
- events - here’s something that EVDB has taken a lead on, following up from where UpComing.org started. WhizSpark is also there and we’re all still waiting for Chandler. Needless to say the microformats folks also cover events - and a little birdy told me some folks at Google are also looking at this area. So expect a lot of interest in the area of events - which I’m sure Microsoft also wants to make sure Outlook’s formats are still supported - as well.
- tags - is a great unknown frontier. Led my Flickr and Technorati, the world of Tags and Topics is exploding! What product today would NOT put in support for tagging their content or people? And wait till you see what Mary Hodder is up to! Tags are the cat’s meow - as they serve as a special kind of micro-content - more like a ricochet or pivot point, then content.
What else?
You can see that we’ve made a lot of progress so far and there’s every reason to believe that by the end of this year - each of the above mentioned micro-content standards will have some presence and implementation up and running.
I myself am dam excited - and can’t wait to start gluing these various levels of functionality, community and dyanmic-ness -together. We’re making sure ALL of our clients support these standards and we’re proud to be associated with them - in any way.
So Gnomedex was a blast, Supernova rocked and now we can get back to getting some work done.
