In my last post I blathered on about what I thought should characterize Web 3.0. This time I want to quickly look at a handful of sites that I think are great examples of what the web should be.
PAAS
Providing a "roll your own" web platform is defintely a hallmark of the user centric web. Some notables here are Amazon (S3, EC2, etc), Google Apps, Salesforce.com, etc. These platforms for solutions. They require an "initiative" with something resembling a business model. These platforms can be molded to create interactive environments for other users to interact with. These new tools are definitely a democratizing force in web development analogous to what the handheld video camera and iMovie did for video production.The User Centric Web
The new Ushahidi Engine is being created to use the lessons learned from Kenya to create a platform that allows anyone around the world to set up their own way to gather reports by mobile phone, email and the web - and map them. It is being built so that it can grow with the changing environment of the web, and to work with other websites and online tools.
Our goal is to create a platform that any person or organization can use to set up their own way to collect and visualize information. The core platform will allow for plug-in and extensions so that it can be customized for different locales and needs. This tool will be tested and made available as an open source application that others can download, implement and use to bring awareness to crises in their own region. Organizations can also use the tool for internal monitoring purposes" - http://www.ushahidi.com/about
Ushahidi.com is a service that aggregates information about crises. The information is sourced from the crises itself via SMS or other technologies that are already there and do not need to be deployed.
Last.fm
Last.fm
is a social networking site. However, it's not a broad platform like
Facebook. Last.fm is focused, exclusively, on music. It's primary
innovation is Scrobbling which is a way for anyone to record the songs
they listen to reguardless of how they listen to it (as long as they
are listening over the internet). They then use that information as a
sort of recommendation engine. I can listen to a "radio" station that
is made up if my "loved" tracks or I can listen to music from my
"neighborhood" which is music that is loved by the people who love
music that I love. The nice thing about how this works is that no one
person listen to the same music that I do. Our similarities are just a
door in. It works great for just listening to stuff I like (my loved
tracks) or looking for something new, my neighborhood.
Ancestry is similar to Last.fm in that it is not really about the people who provide much of the data on the site, but instead, it's about the data. When I enter an ancester in to my family tree, the service looks for that person in other trees and then tells me about it. I can vet that information and add it to my tree if it makes sense.
Aggregation
WeeFeelFine.org scapes the blogosphere look for instance of the phrase "I feel..." (or something like it). That data is then combined with the profile of the blogger to provide various visualizations like how are people feeling in South America or what are the demographics of people are sad, etc. I hope they add Twitter.
The thing that holds all of these together is the origin of the data. It is not crowd sourcing. These sites are providing services that provide services to individuals and allow the individuals to provide value to eachother.
Comments