From Software to Infoware Tim O’Reilly O’Reilly Media, Inc. W3C Tenth Anniversary December 1,...

From Software to Infoware

Tim O’Reilly

O’Reilly Media, Inc.www.oreilly.com

W3C Tenth AnniversaryDecember 1, 2004

"The future is here. It's just not evenly distributed yet."

--William Gibson

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(Control by API)

Desktop ApplicationStack

Proprietary Software

Hardware Lock In

System Assembled fromCommodity Hardware Components

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Free and Open Source Software

Cheap Commodity PCs

Intel Inside

Infoware: Data-Rich,Proprietary Software as Service

Lock In by Network Effects

Data Lock In

Integration of CommoditySoftware Components

Internet ApplicationStack

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The New "Killer Apps"

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What Makes Them Interesting To Me

• The Internet, not the PC, is their platform

• Built on top of open source, but not themselves open source

• Services, not packaged applications

• Exploring how to become platform players via web services APIs

• Data aggregators, not just software

• Network effects from user contributions key to market dominance

• The most successful are “semantic learning systems”, leveraging implicit metadata

Yahoo! Directory

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Google Search

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Listening to Napster (and Open Source)

• Three ways to build a collective database:– Pay people to organize (Yahoo!)– Ask volunteers to do it (Open Directory)– Architect for participation (Napster, Linux, the

WWW)

• Setting defaults for what is shared the most important architectural decision in software development today!

Listening to Google

• Storage is cheap - save everything

• Algorithms are powerful - leverage implicit relationships between data items

• In a world of information richness, close is good enough, serendipity is added value

• Leverage the “architecture of participation” implicit in the web

Amazon - JavaScript

BN - JavaScript

Listening to Amazon

• There’s more than one way to do it! – Leverage both implicit and explicit metadata

• Build an “architecture of participation” by constant small invitations

MapQuest

Navteq

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Listening to MapQuest

• Didn’t build an architecture in which user participation enriched source data

• Ended up without dominant position - three vendors (AOL, Yahoo!, Microsoft) tracking portal share

• Control went to data supplier (NavTeq) - the “Intel Inside”

• NavTeq in turn vulnerable to new data supplier using an implicit metadata strategy, with enrichment by telematics, cell phones, GPS-enabled cameras

Microsoft research photomap

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Social Networking - Orkut

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Microsoft Wallop

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Microsoft Wallop 2

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Dashboard (Nat’s)

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Listening to Social Networks

• Rethink the address book for the age of the internet

• Loads of implicit metadata in email, IM, phone usage

• Standards needed for FOAF permissioning, not FOAF network building - that should be implicit in architecture of communications applications!

Flickr Tagging

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CiteULike

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Key Lessons

• Setting defaults for aggregated data is the most important architectural decision in software development today! Enrichment by user activity should be implicit - applications as learning systems

• Standards should be minimal, encouraging modularity, interoperability, and innovation from the edge

“I’m an inventor. I became interested in long term trends because an invention has to make sense in the world in which it is finished, not the world in which it is started.”

-Ray Kurzweil

For more information

http://tim.oreilly.com/opensource

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