Jul
18
Web superservices solution stack, plus integrated superservices design and management tools: “large pieces loosely joined”
July 18, 2005 |
Note: I have revised this post, made
some small edits, and put “Cut Two” ahead of “Cut
One”–somehow the whole thing reads better to me now. 
Cut Two:
Remember Dave Weinberger’s “small pieces loosely joined“? Well,
the new world features “large pieces loosely joined.” Or rather, “Pieces
large and small loosely joined.”
What is happening before our eyes are that certain web sites are
becoming “web superservices” and are irreversibly changing the
landscape of the web. A new layer of innovation is here.
provide essential functions for solving problems (such as search,
storage/archive, security, pooling of information, notification of
changes, identification of relationships, analysis of memes), are
available on the web as public or near-public global resources with
enormous economies of scale and scope, have very simple open APIs, and
can be integrated (scripted together and/or customized) by users or
near users to provide custom solutions to important problems.*
This general observation regarding changes in the landscape is being
nioted by more and more observers of the technology scene. For
example, Jeff Jarvis has two important current posts, Feedthink and made for the distibuted world. Both are must reads. He quotes Fred Wilson in turn on new business models enabled as Microsoft promotes RSS, and a classic piece by Kevin Hale on The Importance of RSS.
Doc Searles in an astute and popular column published yesterday asks
for objective evaluation of search engines for the living web. He was inspired mostly by comments after after “Robert Scoble posted this and this,” as well as Adam Penenberg’s piece on Technorati and the London bombings in Wired online, calling Technorati “a public utility on a global scale.”
The
more general version of what Doc is calling for is objective
evaluation of a variety of web services, compared to each other within classes (e.g. search,
filter, transport, ping, publish, etc.). We need a J.D. Power for web
superservices. (BTW if anyoneis passionate about this and thinks they
are qualilfied, send me a business plan.)
An intelligent evaluation service is especially necessary in the new
world of web superservices because these new services emerge in an ad
hoc, creative and unpredictable manner. By contrast, traditional
web services exist in a fixed framework (such as .net) and are much
more easily evaluated.
The new web superservices not only enter the landscape from many
directions, they routinely redefine the category in which they
nominally compete. Is Technorati like Google? No. Is
PubSub like Technorati? No. Thus an evaluation service,
even of the seemingly simple class called search engines, will need to
evolve as fast as the services themselves.
The objective criteria will need to be independent and trustworthy,
while being constantly adapted to keep up with how the web
superservices evolve within themselves and co-evolve with others.
Cut One:
But we can take this whole discussion up one G
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