|
I can’t think of a more concrete metaphor for Internet
businesses trying to bring traffic to their sites than the stream of tour buses
that clogged the Netscape parking lot. One after another, they disgorged throngs
of tourists who would take pictures of our Web servers through a window in our
server room (that was installed because of all this demand).
Netscape, and those tourists, are long gone…and, as the Open
Web (a name coined by Steve
Rubel, at Edelman) debuts, websites as destinations could be next.
The concept of the Open Web says that a user’s connections
will fundamentally drive his or her Web experience, and technologies like Open ID and Open Social will turn all websites
into mere elements of a vast social network.
Rubel gives this example: You’re reading an email message on
your iGoogle page that mentions a book or travel destination; you see the
Amazon 1-Click button right there, along with any relevant reviews from your
friends in your address book or social network to which you belong. You could
also see weather information for the destination and tagged photos from Flickr.
Conversely, imagine reading relevant email messages, sorted
for you, as you browse on Amazon – complete with your friends’ reviews,
weather, and photos mentioned above. Or users to your site utilizing a social
frame (familiar to users of the social browser Flock) for discussion or to pull
in content from any other site or service, including competitors’.
Websites will exist, certainly, but the content on them will
appear, in different formats and chunks, all over the Internet. A review
snippet on a user’s start page, a product listing in email, a comments pane while
listening to an MP3 on an iPod: The Open Web will be the ultimate atomization
of content and services – and in real time.
But while this vision may be appealing to users, it raises some
serious business questions.
Who will get any ad impression? Will ads follow all content,
wherever it’s displayed? How will content from behind paywalls (which are being
increasingly erected) be counted and accounted for? Will users leave behind sites that don't play by the Open Web realities?
Eliot Bergson is the former Editor in Chief at Netscape.
Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register. |
