One thing that has been bugging me for a while is that, while we discuss the demise of the Website due to the fragmentation of the Web, we don’t seem to be straight on what will be the organizing principle (ok, so maybe it’s just me).
I have always had an allergy to rearranging the Web in the model of consumption based around widgets, RSS, and aggregators such as NetVibes.
Oh, yes, I exalted aggregators. But, the more I worked with folks on the concept, it became clear to me that it was the _individual_ that was the organizing principle. It’s not about aggregating my Web, but aggregating what I _do_ on the Web, with the _people_ I do it with, and thereby enriching my real world life.
And, indeed, that has heavily focused our goals for Ovi.com.
And watching the rise of very focused person-person communication and lifestream (strong 2007 term) tools such as Facebook, Jaiku, and Twitter, has further affirmed our direction, centered around social networking in the sense we are used to – direct communications, not some sort of passive publication model with some commenting by strangers that characterized the Blog Years (hence Vox).
And then Socialstream crossed my path (see link below). This is quite much what I have been trying to gel around. And these guys do (and say and show) it so well.
You want to see where the Web is going? Read this then:
Link Socialstream:
Socialstream is a system where users can seamlessly share, view, and respond to many types of social content across multiple networks.
the thing is none of the social services out now offer the granularity that real life offers. i would love to add anyone i ever had a meaningful conversation with in my social network, but i’m not going to treat them the same way.
facebook lumps everyone into a category, so does myspace, twitter, etc.
i’m not buying this hype about social streams and social graphs and all that jazz. people have a lot more important things to do than monitor social streams. you begin to ask yourself, who do you priositize over someone else? do you not accept an invite from a friend on service A, but do so on service B?
jaiku got close to that, but it still wasn’t granular enough. ovi will be one tough cookie to crack.
Stefan,
Well said.
I have a fuller response here:
http://molecularist.com/lifeblog/2007/12/tweeps-on-the-a.html
Tchau,
Charlie