Scott Mebberson

I’ve been thinking about web 2.0 a fair bit of late. I really like web 2.0 and the people-centric nature of its concept. I think it’s taking the web in a really great direction.

I wrote a post a week or so back about The Programmable Web, what I’ve been calling a byproduct of web 2.0. My post discusses the value of the web as a programmable environment itself (due to the growing number of APIs that are now available).

I think all the mashups people are creating in days (as opposed to months in traditional development) are fantastic. For me, this is one the key factors in why the web has grown so rapidly in the past 12 to 18 months.

However, many of these new breed of websites focus only on one task, for example, picnic and Snipshot focus solely on editing pictures online. In isolation, this isn’t a problem, in fact it allows developers to focus on one thing only, and make sure they do it well (as opposed to being a jack of all trades).

My question is, with so many cool, useful websites/services out there, are we missing something? What about the integration of these websites? For example, wouldn’t it be great to start building a mind map using MindMeister, then use picnik to crop an image to suit, and perhaps even cue point a video using YouTube and drop that into your mind map. At present, that’s damn hard to do!

Might this be the next version of the web? Building better integration between websites and immediately benefiting from the massive infrastructure of the web.

What about APIs?, you might say. Sure, they’re a great start, but you still need to glue the various APIs together with a programming language and a platform. I see the user interface as the major stumbling block for short term, better website integration. I think a change in the infrastructure of the web (or at least api programming) needs to take place, to allow the web to progress beyond web 2.0.

Filed under: web 2.0