ReadWriteWeb's Top 5 Web Trends in 2009

Top 5 Web Trends of 2009 ReadWriteWeb’s State of the Web, Sept 09 Presented by: Richard MacManus, Founder & Editor, ReadWriteWeb

http://www.readwriteweb.com

Daily analysis of Web Technology news, products & trends

Other ReadWriteWeb channels: ReadWriteStart (startups and entrepreneurs), ReadWriteEnterprise (social software inside organizations), ReadWriteTalk (podcast show)

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

Founder & Editor: Richard MacManus

RWW writers: Marshall Kirkpatrick, Bernard Lunn, Alex Iskold, Sarah Perez, Frederic Lardinois, Dana Oshiro, Jolie O’Dell, Steven Walling

Web 2.0

2005-2008, The Social Web

Read/Write, two-way, anyone can be a publisher

The term “Web 2.0” defined 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

Beyond Web 2.0: 2009 Trends

Structured / Linked Data - Wolfram Alpha, OpenCalais

Real-Time Web - Twitter, FriendFeed

Personalization - Facebook, Amazon.com

Mobile Web / Augmented Reality - FourSquare, Layer

Internet of Things - IBM, Pachube

1. Structured Web

Web of Data

“ Unstructured information will give way to structured information - paving the road to more intelligent computing.” ( When Sites Become Services ; Alex Iskold, Mar 07)

Pages not the center of the Web now, Data and Services are

More Than Semantic Web

Linked Data

Microformats

RDFa

Curated content (Wolfram|Alpha uses Wikipedia, licensed content, etc)

Any type of structured content: XML, CSV files, database

Linked Data

Linked Data: structured data, but not necessarily semantic

W3C Linking Open Data (LOD) project

The image illustrates participating data sets as of March 2009. E.g. Thomson Reuters' OpenCalais project, Freebase, and DBpedia

Re-uses existing ontologies such as WordNet, FOAF, and SKOS

The data sets all grant access to their knowledge bases and link to items of other data sets.

The Web of Data: Creating Machine-Accessible Information ; Alexander Korth, Apr 2009

Linked Data: Let A Thousand Flowers Bloom

Linked Data enables data to be opened up and connected so that people can build interesting new things from it. (via Tim Berners-Lee) Linked Data is Blooming ; Richard MacManus, May 2009

Image credit: Tim Berners-Lee, TED, Feb 09

Linked Data: OpenCalais Example: OpenCalais Reuters, the international business and financial news giant, launched an API called OpenCalais in Feb 08. The API does a semantic markup on unstructured HTML documents - recognizing people, places, companies, and events. OpenCalais review ; Alex Iskold, Feb 08

Google Rich Snippets

Adding structured data to Google's core search.

Rich snippets

extract and show useful info from web pages

uses structured data open standards such as microformats and RDFa

Google evolving ; Richard MacManus, May 09

Image credit: Matt Cutts, Google

Wolfram Alpha

“ computational knowledge engine”

Vast repository of curated data from public and licensed sources

Sophisticated Natural Language Processing algorithms

Search engine-like interface, natural language statements

Does computations on data

W|A: The Use Cases ; Richard MacManus, July 09

W|A: First Impressions ; Frederic Lardinois, April 09

2. Real-Time Web

New form of communication,

New body of content,

Real time,

Public, social graph associated with it,

Implicit model of federation. The Real-Time Web: A Primer ; Ken Fromm, Aug 09

A core part of many Internet products this year: Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, Google, Delicious, Wordpress, and many others.

Twitter

Real-Time Communication

Breaks News

Zeitgeist

Business and Competitive Intelligence

The Twitter Platform; Marshall Kirkpatrick, Mar 09

Facebook’s Changes

March 09 site re-design ; focus on real-time stream

June 09 real-time search

Aug 09 Facebook acquires FriendFeed

3. Personalization

Filters and recommendations

“ The Internet is shifting to discrete units of information […] organized in ways that are relevant and personal to each individual …”; Ken Fromm, Sep 09

E.g. Twitter client like TweetDeck, Seesmic or Peoplebrowsr; group people, keywords and topics

Open Data

The more data about you and your social graph that is available to be used by applications, the better targeted the content and/or service will be to you.

APIs, Portable data

Making data available on the Web via APIs, web services, open data standards

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” Thoughts on the Social Graph ; Brad Fitzpatrick, Aug 07

Tim Berners-Lee: Third main "level" of computer networks (Giant Global Graph): Internet --> Web --> Graph. Social Graph & Beyond ; Richard MacManus, Nov 07

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

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

Rethinking Recommendation Engines; Alex Iskold, Feb 08

Recommendation Engines - Examples

Amazon

Netflix

last.fm

Pandora

StumbleUpon

del.icio.us

10 Recommended Recommendation Engines ; Richard MacManus, Feb 08

9 Recommendation Tools We Wish We Had ; Marshall Kirkpatrick, Nov 08

4. Mobile Web

Portable, physical world

Location-aware

Apple Dominates Mobile Web, But Android on The Rise...

iPhone share of smartphone traffic: 45% worldwide and 60% in the U.S.

Android 12% in U.S. and 7% worldwide Admob, July 09

iPhone revolution

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

3G version released July 08, along with App Store

Ref: Boom! iPhone Rocks Tech World ; Richard MacManus, Jan 07

Mobile Web Apps

Mobile Web Apps Explosion

Mobile Web Apps & Sites ; Richard MacManus, Nov 08

Google Maps for Mobile

Opera Mini

Fring (VoIP, IM)

Shozu (send media to Web)

Facebook iPhone app

Yahoo OneConnect

Microsoft: mobile version of Microsoft Office, MySpace platform on Windows Mobile phones.

"Facebook Connect for Mobile Web" makes mobile apps more social.

Promising startups: Brightkite, Foursquare

Augmented Reality

Augmented reality: the addition of a layer to the world on your mobile device

Android the early leader, iPhone catching up

Example iPhone apps: Paris Metro Subway, Yelp app with AR, London Bus app 3 Augmented Reality Apps ; Marshall Kirkpatrick, Aug 09

Other apps: Layar, Wikitude

AR Hype on the Rise ; Sarah Perez, Aug 09

Image credit: Mr.Whisper

5. Internet of Things

When real world objects (e.g. fridges, lights and toasters) get connected to the Internet.

Network of Internet-enabled objects, together with web services that interact with these objects.

Technologies include RFID (radio frequency identification), sensors, and smartphones.

Image credit: Touchatag

IBM & The Internet of Things

Offers a range of RFID and sensor technology solutions

IBM & Danish transportation company Container Centralen: sensors as part of the entire travel chain

Allows participants to monitor conditions and climate during travel. IBM and IoT ; Richard MacManus, July 09

Pachube: Platform for Internet Enabled Environments

Pachube (pronounced "PATCH-bay"): lets you tag and share real time sensor data from objects, devices, buildings and environments both physical and virtual.