Born on the Web

Alice & Irène podcasted my presentation at Barcamp that I did almost 2 months ago. I should have prepared my presentation better, I'm a bit embarrassed for my bad English. But it was a great exercise and I got some interesting feedback, so it was a positive experience. - The podcast (mp3) - The presentation (pdf) More on the subject in My Thesis category and of course the paper itself. Thanks Alice and Irène !

This week was a great week. It was extremely busy, I had my thesis presentation on Thursday. I was very happy with the experts that were in the jury. They were a good representation of the web and marketing landscape in Belgium. I don't think I was nervous, but there was a little pressure to explain everything really clear in my presentation. You can find the presentation online. Like usual I make very minimal slides, just one or two keywords on a slide. So without me chattering, you probably won't understand what the slides mean. Friday I got the news I passed for my thesis + project, so this was good news. Tomorrow, Monday, I'll know my exact grades. Friday I was in the newspaper "Het Belang van Limburg" because I was nominated for a prize called Wanatoe (article, in Dutch). Wanatoe is a prize organized by the same newspaper and is for graduate students, for their final thesis project. All last year students from the "KHLIM" and "PHL" school could participate. I was a bit surprised I was nominated and very glad the jury saw some potential in my project. Reading your own interview is kinda strange. I'm not sure the interview was a good representation of the person that I am. I don't like to be called a web designer, but I understand that this is term everyone knows, so it is logical that a mainstream medium like a newspaper likes to use this term. Yesterday evening I went to the official awards ceremony of Wanatoe. And completely unexpected I got a prize !? I was already pretty surprised to be nominated and now I have the chance to work further on my project in a very good environment. I'll get coached for over one year by the people of "Z33" and "platform vormgeving limburg". The first prize, so the actual Wanatoe prize, went to Heidi Ector. She made a kind of dance choreography, so something very different from my project. I hope I get the chance to check out what she made. It seems pretty cool. Just like the other nominations. This all came very unexpected but I'm very glad the jury saw the potential of the new media in my project and acknowledged it. I'm getting pretty excited what the rest of the year will bring. I saw back a friend I met in Africa Friday. All of a sudden he turn up on our traditional after school year BBQ, very unexpected but extremely nice to see him again. Welcome to Belgium Patson. Next week will be very different. Wednesday night I leave for Rock Werchter, it will feel good to have a no-computer-week. I'll prove to you all, I don't have problems going trough the days without a computer or the internet. At least as long if there is beer, women and rock'n roll. :)

Well I'm a bit embarrassed I didn't really got a decent "thank you" in my paper. I should have noted my friends explicitly. But the only thing I could think about was getting the damn paper printed. When browsing to the papers of my friends Johan and Lev I found following lines in the acknowledgments:

• Alle bewoners van Berebroek studentenhome met in het bijzonder de heer Van Hove en de heer Wynants.
• Lev en Jesse voor hun vriendschap, optimisme, humor, werklust, spontaniteit en de zotte stoten,…

Well they should be thanked properly, so here is the official thank you specially for my friends at C-MD: Bedankt beste bazekes, Zonder een partijtje voetbal tussendoor, een kook - drinkpartij of gewoon wat vettige praat verkopen (in de 4 jaar op kot is mijn nederlandse woordenschat kennis sterk gestegen), had ik nooit de motivatie gevonden te werken aan mijn project of thesis. Zelfs al interesseerde het jullie soms totaal niet, toch mocht ik af en toe severen tegen jullie. Ik weet zeker dat we elkaar nog regelmatig gaan terugzien ook al gaat iedereen een beetje zijn eigen weg uit. Bij deze wens ik jullie allemaal veel succes in het vinden van die eigen weg en weet dat er in mijn mailbox altijd plaats zal zijn voor een mailtje van jullie. Bedankt!!

Well, my paper is finished, after almost a year of brainstorming, discussing, choosing and writing. I can say: "enough!". I needed to keep my feed reader closed this week because I kept on putting new stuff in the paper. But finally it has come to an end. I am pretty happy with the result. It was a very interesting experience and I hope to use the theory later on in other projects. This is what I find the most interesting and I would really love to work further in this area after my graduation. Anyway like I always promised, here is the pdf of the full paper. Feel free to look into it. I'm going to print it tomorrow(06-06-06:)) morning so if you find a mistake, please do mail me on jesse at f4l dot be . Other remarks and suggestion also always welcome. Download the paper (pdf, right click - save as...) Now a little thank you, to all the people that helped me out:

• First of all, my promoters and lecturers: Niels Hendriks and Kris Aerts.
• Arun Rattan & my mom for reviewing the text. I couldn't have done it without those two guardian angels ;) .
• All my test users of the project, who provided me with valuable feedback.
• The people who attended my presentation at Barcamp and gave me feedback.
• Of course my colleague students for their view on my subject.
• Everyone else, with whom I talked about my ideas.

Well what's next, actually not that much (WOOHOO!!) . I need to present my paper in front of the jury the 22th of June. I'll post the presentation. I still have some projects running that urgently need to be finished. I'm not sure yet, what to do with the blog. I'll probably keep on posting my findings on the "world live web". As a bonus, here is the contents of the paper. Have fun with it and let me know what you think. Introduction 1 Abstract 2 Contents 3 1. The shift from WEB 1.0 to WEB 2.0 5 1.1 Introduction 6 1.2 What is the WEB 2.0? What is the difference with WEB 1.0? 6 1.3 WEB 2.0: a buzzword, marketing term or useful evolution of the web? 6 1.3.1 Usability 8 1.3.2 Economy 9 1.3.3 Design 9 1.3.4 Standardisation 10 1.3.5 Remixability 11 1.3.6 Convergence 1.3.7 Participation 12 1.4 Online content in a WEB 2.0 environment 13 2. Online content 14 2.1 Introduction 15 2.2 Evolution of the web 2.2.1 The static web 15 2.2.2 The world live web 16 2.3 Importance of online content 16 2.4 Contributing online content 17 2.5 Creating content no longer for the elite early adopters 17 2.6 Interacting with online content 18 2.7 The upward spiral of syndicated content 19 2.8 Content interaction models 21 2.8.1 CIM 1: Content is the same as User Interface. 21 2.8.2 CIM 2: Content lives in the database. 22 2.8.3 CIM 3: User generated content 22 2.8.4 CIM 4: Syndication 23 2.8.5 CIM 5: Web service 24 2.9 Use of new Content interaction Models 27 2.9.1 Amazon S3 27 2.9.2 Ning.com 27 2.9.3 Flickr.com to Amazon S3 27 2.10 Consequences of WEB 2.0 Content Interaction Models 27 3. Network of services 29 3.1 Introduction 30 3.2 Network effect of services 30 3.2.1 What is a network effect? 30 3.2.2 Network effect of services 30 3.3 Consequences of network effect 31 3.3.1 Accelerating innovation 31 3.3.2 Increasing competitive services 31 3.3.3 Increasingly specialized services 31 3.3.4 User empowerment 31 3.3.5 Standardisation 32 3.4 Advantages for the service provider 32 3.4.1 Value of content increases 3.4.2 Drive people to your stuff 32 3.4.3 Less central development 33 3.4.4 Advertising 33 3.4.5 Pay-for service 33 3.4.6 Partnerships 33 4. Project: Metathings.com 34 4.1 Introduction 35 4.2 The theory behind Metathings 35 4.2.1 Remixability 4.2.2 Content Interaction model: Syndication 4.2.3 Participation 36 4.3 Testing phase 36 4.4 How did I come to Metathings concept? 36 4.5 How did I come to my conclusions? 37 4.5.1 During the test period 37 4.5.2 After the test period 37 4.6 The conclusions 37 4.7 The future of Metathings 38 Conclusion 39 Bibliography 40 Webliography 40 Acknowledgments 42

This is one thing I talked about in my presentation at Barcamp Brussels, I will put the complete presentation online. But the presentation itself isn't that clear without my explanation. Smetty recorded my talk so I'll make the presentation available when I can get hold of the podcast. Every theory I'll talk about on the blog, can later be found in my thesis paper. What do I mean with syndicated content? It's a pretty broad meaning, it is not only content in RSS or atom feeds. It can also be content you interacted with trough a web service / API. As Peter Bailey notes on his blog you can interact with online content on different ways. Consuming has always been possible on the net. But thanks to the syndication of online content it has become much easier to interact on different ways with your content:

• Creating: it has never been easier for the end-user to publish content to the web. You don't need technical skills to make content and publish it to the net. A few examples of very easy content publishing: Flickr Uploadr (just drag photos in a window and hit upload), google page creator, the very user friendly CMS wordpress ...
• Collating: A lot of tools made it easier to collate online content. Most feed readers give you the option to save a feed item. You can bring together relevant content for later use. But the simplest form of collating online content is simple bookmarks. Examples: My FeedDemon feed reader has the feature to drag feed items in saved categories. Every feed item that can be useful for my thesis I can collate in my thesis saved category. A lot of content platforms give you the possibility to add the link to del.ico.us, you can tag it collate it and order it the way you want.
• Commenting: A lot of blogs, news platforms give you the possibility to add comments directly to a article. Even if this isn't possible, you can simply use the quote the online content and make your own blogpost on it commenting on the article. Examples: the add comment box in a lot of blogs, news platforms, flickr, youtube, ... The ease to reblog a feed item to comment on it in a lot of feed readers. Easy to blog items on digg.com or flickr: a button "blog this".
• Collaborating: Easy to remix syndicated content. I can bring together my own blogpost with a used flickr photo. We group our flickr photos with a same theme in a flickr group. We link our del.icio.us bookmarks together with the del.icio.us network so we can share valuable information.

The essential part on interaction of content is: The better your content is syndicated the more possibilities you create for users to interact with your content. Syndicated content is easier to consume, collate, comment on, collaborate with, (re)create.. Syndicated content added to the web can potentially make every other piece of syndicated content more valuable (=in analogy with Tom Coates "future of web apps" statements) This is what I call the upward spiral of syndicated content: When you create online content and syndicate it. It can become part of this upward spiral, the more people consume, collate, comment on, collaborate with your content, the more valuable it will become. If your content leads to new creations, those creations become part of your upward spiral and can be consumed, collated, commented on, ...

1. More interaction on your syndicated content means more value of the content.
2. The more it leads to new creations, comments, ... the wider the spiral becomes, the further the reach of your content.

Can you find more examples when syndicated content becomes more valuable? Or examples when it doesn't ?

The wisdom of crowds is something very very interesting. With the WEB 1.0 evolving to WEB2.0 it has became more realistic. It says that a random group of people, a crowd, can give more accurate results than individual experts. The intellectuel knowledge of the people in the crowd has to be very different. Diversity in opinion is needed to make the wisdom of crowds work. When I started thinking about wisdom of crowds a few months ago it also seemed very surrealistic to me, but it has already proven its use:

• A lot of companies use it to predict, how many times a product will be sold. They put a crowd together of very different people and let them all guess a number of how many products will be sold. At the end of the day they take the average of the number everyone said, and that will be the wisdom of the crowd. In a lot of cases it has been proven that the wisdom of crowds gives a valuable number.
• Google pagerank algorithm: One of the important factors that ranks a webpage is how many incoming links the webpage has. So the algorithm completely relies on the crowd, if a lot of people link that webpage with that keyword, it should be a relevant and useful webpage. It has already been proven that this method worked.
• Wikipedia: This online encyclope completely relies on its crowd, its member to check, double check, information. Users are very critical towards each other, which gives us quit good results.
• Syndication: I'm a huge believer that syndicated content can bring us better information. Because you "the end-user" can remix the different opinions of a crowd and put them next to each other

There are however a few requirements, but as you'll see, a lot of those requirements can be complied in a web 2.0 environment:

• Diversity: Diversity, or large variation in ideas, is crucial to being able to extract wisdom from the crowd. We need liberal, conservative, crazy, hair-brained, logical, rational, irrational, and all ideas in between. The reason why we need such diversity is probability. The more diversity in the ideas that we include, the higher the probability that one of those ideas is the *right* one. Because sometimes it just happens to be that one hair-brained idea that leads us down the right path. (source: bokardo.com)
• Independence: In addition to a diversity of ideas from which to choose, we need the quality of not imitating the first idea that comes along (even if it is diverse). Instead, we need to hold to our own ideas, if possible, to come up with our own conclusions. That’s not to say that we won’t agree with other people, but each of us has our own set of knowledge, and holding to that set of knowledge will keep our thought independent. Independence is about how we react to ideas as they are presented to us. (source: bokardo.com)
• Decentralization: Most of us tend to generalize ideas so as to make them applicable to other situations. This, however, might not be the best way to tackle problems in order to extract the wisdom of crowds. According to Surowieki, a better way might be to attack problems individually, in a decentralized manner, so that those people closest to the problem are the ones who solve it, not somebody from on high. Decentralization is crucial to tacit knowledge, that sort of knowledge that is hard to communicate to others, and is often vital to solving the problem at hand. (source: bokardo.com)

An aggregator that collects syndicated content from a diversity of people about a certain theme. This aggregator in combination with a community popular algorithm, that filters out the bad quality content, should bring us the wisdom of crowds about a certain theme at a certain moment in time. Why ? --> We get different views and ideas about the theme, because of the diversity in the group of people. Always a positive and negative aspect, always people pro and contra. --> The popular algorithm should bring forward the best, most popular, most controversial content. --> You stay an independent content provider. The platform aggregates the content, you keep writing on your personal blog or keep posting bookmarks to your personal del.icio.us account. The platform doesn't want to take that individual and independent power away. It is necessairy that the aggregated content stays independent. A community web aggregator that brings forward the wisdom of crowds about a certain theme at a certain moment in time. What do you think? Will you use it? Sources :

1. The book: the wisdom of crowds (If you want to borrow it, just ask)
2. The author's podcast at SXSW Conference
3. Wisdom of crowds is the crucial idea of the WEB 2.0
4. Shouldn't the wisdom of crowds lead to better politicians?

I corrected some embarrasing spelling mistakes and change it a bit. Now on writely : http://www.writely.com/View.aspx?docid=bac7dd5kwxsfs Remarks still welcome ...

My raw structure, it will still change a lot during the writing but you'll see where I'm going with my master thesis. It would be great if you could send all relevant information, all feedback, suggestions are always welcome. I promise I'll buy you a drink !! Now I'm writing and programming like a horney rabbit. I hope to start the beta test of my project this Friday and on the 4th of may I need to have the most of my writing done. If you like blogging have a flickr account and love to use del.icio.us, you can join the beta. Please send me an email. (jesse _at_ f4l _dot_ be) It's a hell of a job, so don't expect much posts over here...

It's been quiet lately over here. Well I'm in France for 2 weeks to get some thinking/writing for my masterthesis done. I'm on good old dial-up, so don't really have the time to do some posting. I'm working on my thesis and I have to say, without internet I really can get some writing done. I'm glad feed reading is not an option on dial-up. Now I realize how easy it is to get distracted from the things that really need to be done when you're constantly online. One of these days I'll be posting the structure for my thesis. I'm pretty happy with it but it just needs a little more time to sink in and review it. The weather is great over here (20° C) so it's great to relax and spend some time in nature, we actually made a little nature documentairy (it's in dutch - dialect ):

Remember everything is a work in progress with me... :)