Flux Research: Online Business Models

Flux Research on Web 3.0 & Beyond

I was just reading Nicholas Carr on Tim Berners-Lee, the social graph and Web 3.0 and decided it's time to jot down my basic take on what comes after Web 2.0.

Web 1.0 - Platform is the desktop
Web 2.0 - Platform is the open web
Web 3.0 - Platform goes mobile
Web 4.0 - Platform extended to objects & the physical environment
Web 5.0 - Platform enters the human system

Like the shift from the modern to the postmodern, each new phase incorporates and intermingles with previous phases rather than replacing them.

In addition, phases will overlap, some may leapfrog others and, in general, developments will be increasingly nonlinear.  For example, while the still closed nature of mobile carrier platforms will be overwhelmed by the open mobile web the extension of the web to objects and into the human body will create an even stronger need for walled gardens and systems that securely mix open and closed elements.

Of course you could focus on other categories of development and explore other trajectories but currently I'm finding the focus on platforms most useful.  On a related note, I find the concepts of the Semantic Web and the social graph very Web 2.0.

A Brief History of the New Media Revolution

Nicholas Carr on Mark Zuckerberg's 100 Year Law

Nicholas Carr skewers Mark Zuckerberg's attempt to overreach his education:

"Once every hundred years media changes," boy-coder turned big-thinker Mark Zuckerberg declared today at the Facebook Social Advertising Event in New York City. And it's true. Look back over the last millennium or two, and you'll see that every century, like clockwork, there's been a big change in media. Cave painting lasted a hundred years, and then there was smoke signaling, which also lasted a hundred years, and of course there was the hundred years of yodeling, and then there was the printing press, which was invented almost precisely 100 years ago, and so forth and so on up to the present day - the day that Facebook picked up the 100-year torch and ran with it. Quoth the Zuckster: "The next hundred years will be different for advertising, and it starts today."

Read the whole thing.  It may sound harsh but Carr is rarely harsh without a darn good reason.

That's why Rough Type gets the Flux Research "Hype Slasher" Seal of Approval!

"Part Time Librarian to Chairman/CEO"

Here's are some interesting details from a job description for a "Part Time Librarian to Chairman/CEO":

Serve as librarian to the Chairman and CEO of an investment partnership based in Greenwich, CT...

Develop and track a reading program
- Work with the CEO and staff to develop a weekly reading syllabus
- Set specific reading goals and actively track the CEO’s progress
- Continuously update the syllabus to reflect feedback and new content

Recommend and purchase new books
- Work with the CEO and staff to define and continuously update a list of reading topics
- Proactively identify books, articles, and academic research that address these topics
- Review, recommend, and purchase relevant materials

Research applicable topics
- Respond to research requests as received
- Work with staff to initiate relevant research efforts independently

Perform requisite administrative functions
- Send books and other reading materials to the CEO and staff who are traveling
- Execute other library-related administrative functions as needed

I'm especially interested in the elements that indicate that this will be a position in which the librarian becomes an active contributor to the development of knowledge within the organization.

Of special note:
Set specific reading goals and actively track the CEO’s progress

That strikes me as rare.

Sam Whitmore's Media Survey & New Forms of Editorial Content

Sam Whitmore's Media Survey provides information and analysis for folks in tech pr but I listen to Sam's podcast to find out what he has to say about B2B tech publishing because that's what he follows to keep pr folks up to date.

One of the big themes Sam gets me thinking about is the shift in what constitutes editorial content including new developments in custom publishing and vendor content creation, social networks as publishing platforms and such notions as rss feed aggregation as editorial process.  By "rss feed aggregaton as editorial process" I'm clumsily referring to the fact that these days a web publisher can be someone who combines rss feeds and runs advertising next to the headlines.  Sam regularly considers aspects of this development.

For a simple example of how I've explored such ideas as "rss feed aggregaton as editorial process" please see World Cypher, a one-page website that features mixed rss feeds from hip hop blogs and news outlets plus a Flickr photo strip for pics marked "hip hop" and a Google custom search engine focused on hip hop sites.

Sam Whitmore's Media Survey will be broadening its focus in '08 to include consumer publications so SWMS is going to be an even greater resource for those in tech pr as well as for those wanting to understand how publishers are adjusting to the emergent media environment.

Information R/evolution: Using False Comparisons to Make a Questionable Point

Information R/evolution

I was initially disappointed that Julian had closed the comments on his interesting response to the above video and to Mitch Joel's take on the video but it gives me an opportunity to post here.

One door closes, many remain open.

The above video starts with a model for information gathering that depicts finding objects on library shelves as an example of the old way of finding information versus the new world of the Web where we are freed of experts and expert taxonomies and enter a rich world of readily available information via search engines.

There's more in there but that core comparison is what interests me at the moment though I will briefly explore only one aspect.

Major problem: The library was never the sole source of information and rarely the primary source of information for most of our daily needs in pre-Web days.

Libraries have never been the only way people get information.  We also talk to neighbors, track down experts, go to bookstores, watch tv and so forth.

In a very real sense the web has rebundled those sources of information so that when we go online we might now go to our public library's online databases, talk to peers in forums, read expert blogs and e-books, watch how-to videos on YouTube and so forth.

So if you compare the web, an aggregator of all those sources, to one of those sources, then of course the web comes out as superior, even if one does not replace all those other sources with the web.

That's a rigged comparison which means that what one learns from it will be inherently flawed.

On a related note:

"There is no shelf." [!?!]

Of course there's a shelf.  It's called a server.

From the Dewey Decimal System to Mahalo

I've been thinking about an odd comment in John Battelle's The Search [p. 33] regarding the Dewey Decimal System:
The Dewey decimal system has been updated numerous times over the years and is still widely used, but its subject-based focus would be unable to scale to the enormousness of the World Wide Web.

It's a passing comment from Battelle so I'm not using it to criticize his work but I think it's fairly obvious that the Dewey Decimal System wasn't designed to address search within resources so how could it be scalable in relationship to search?  It's simply not relevant once you get past the problem of a classification system designed to deal with individual objects and move on to the actual contents.

But subject-based classification systems are eminently scalable to the "enormousness" of the Web when categorizing individual resources and allowing for multiple subject categories per resource as shown by the Yahoo! Directory and the Open Directory.

On a related note, one has to wonder if the seemingly universal shift to search replacing portals was spurred in some small part by the devolution of the Yahoo! Directory to an overpriced SEO catalog and of the Open Directory to a poorly maintained collection of inconsistent quality.

Obviously even a well-maintained directory of websites is not a search engine.  So if you've got a web directory but a search engine's what you need, just fire up a Google Custom Search Engine, have it automatically add all the links from your directory and then let them provide the search of all the sites listed via one engine that can monetize the service via Google text ads.

Though you'll have to acknowledge Google's obvious involvement, you can then flip from directory mode, make your landing page the Google search box and call your site a search engine.

Similar to the Jason Calacanis/Mahalo model.

[Disclaimer: I'm a former Open Directory editor.]

Introducing: Clyde Smith

It felt like I went public today by linking out to other blogs and sending a trackback so I guess it's time to share a little personal information.

Flux Research: It's a Clyde Thing

Vita Highlights:

MLS (Library Science): Texas Woman's University (2006)
Phd (Cultural Studies in Education): The Ohio State University (2000)
MA (Dance & Performance Studies): UNC-Greensboro (1995)

Academic Research:

Alternative Forms of Data Presentation
Nonlinear Science and the Postpositivist Researcher
Course Proposals: Art for Engineers

Web Publishing:

Cultural Research
netweed
ProHipHop

This is a one man show, like many of my current projects, though I've been a team player before and am becoming one once again [that's called foreshadowing].

If you wish to be in touch, please do:
clydesmith(at)culturalresearch(dot)org

Peace.

"Dealing with failures...is our standard mode of operation"

Nick Carr discusses Amazon's Dynamo system, "used to support many of the most critical elements of Amazon's operation including shopping-cart processing", with a focus on a paper by Amazon's CTO, Werner Vogels, and a number of coauthors titled Dynamo: Amazon’s Highly Available Key-value Store.

I mention it here due to this wonderful quote that appears in The Introduction on page 1:

Dealing with failures in an infrastructure comprised of millions of components is our standard mode of operation; there are always a small but significant number of server and network components that are failing at any given time. As such Amazon’s software systems need to be constructed in a manner that treats failure handling as the normal case without impacting availability or performance.

Dealing with failures as a standard mode of operation.

That's something worth thinking about.

Flux Research: Stage 2

If you're looking for the old Flux Research featuring Media 2.0 newsfeeds then you've found what it's become.

Links to the current location of the old feeds are in the left sidebar.  I'll be adding those and/or related feeds to this site soon.

Be in touch:
clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com

Flux Research: Business, Information, Web 2.0

Here's another blog.  Just what the world ordered.

I'm not so sure about the subtitle.  I'll keep playing with it as a way to indicate the main areas I'm trying to connect at Flux Research.  I'll know more once a pattern of posts emerge.

Business:
web publishing, Media 2.0, disruptive technologies, Blue Ocean strategies, information entrepreneurship, the bottom of the pyramid.

Information:
Library 2.0, the distributed academic library, business reference, Blue Ocean information services, chaos and complexity.

Web 2.0
blogging, social networking, mobile communication, the semantic web, open access publishing, social media.

This isn't really a mashup so much as a way to figure out some of the relationships between these things.  Not to define them but to help map out the terrain with a few of the landmarks and possibilities.

Clyde Smith
clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com