I think, based on this theory, and my reading of the market, that Social Media is not good enough yet, and is therefore too premature to benefit from open standards. Host applications (like FaceBook and Pownce and others) need to keep their systems (called “Containers” in the field) highly optimized so all these busy developers out in the wild can continue writing add-ons that are tightly coupled to their specific set of capabilities.
Riiiiing… Rrrinnngggg. Hey Hugh, it’s me, Lawrence. I gotta talk to you about this new open standard that’s going to revolutionize the way we drink: It’s called the Dixie Cup. It’s really great. What we’ve done is wax coated a plain old paper cup, and now it’ll hold more types of beverages… it’s almost universal! [...]
From the smoking cauldrons in Arlington comes an effort to track every electronic, and some not so electronic, bit of data surrounding a persons life. The electronic data mesh this conceives would be capable of making incredible connections between information, the needs for which are being questioned by government and private agencies alike… Wired News: [...]
The Semantic Web Scientific American: Feature Article: The Semantic Web: May 2001 by TIM BERNERS-LEE, JAMES HENDLER and ORA LASSILA an interesting article from last year covers the basic elements of the semantic Web quite well.
Avatarnets moving along… Peter Small has come a long way with his avaters as a group resource/info sharing medium. His concept of a “virtual cafe” is being used to some extent at: Agent control panel His main site give all the background data at: http://www.avatarnets.com