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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