Aggregation is the New Black
Posted on Tuesday, Jun 9, 2009It’s been a while since I’ve blogged about technology, and that’s really my strong suit. I’m going to make a marked effort to post more tech-related content, and not just “Tech Tips”, but also my reactions to technology and where I think things are going.
It’s no great revelation that we are all awash in a sea of data. This data can come from various sources – for example, one thing I have long wrestled with is the disparate nature of my Contacts – I have contact information for people in Outlook, my BlackBerry, Gmail, and Facebook, just to name a few. For a long time, I have struggled with the concept of “synchronizing” this data – making sure that every one of those sources has an identical copy of the same information. I’m coming to the conclusion that this is perhaps not the right solution – we think that we want sync, but maybe we want more than that.
In addition to information that I create/control (i.e., contact information), there is a glut of data coming in to me every day for outside sources – emails from friends, blog posts, tweets, Facebook status updates, pictures on Flickr, and forum postings, just to name a few. This is all information that is created by other people, and either published to me from the creator, or possibly shared with me from a third-party (i.e., a friend who forwards me a link to a blog post). Keeping “on top” of all of this information requires me to manage multiple views into this information – the great example would be multiple tabs in a browser window, open to the various services that are specific to each channel of information, like so:
Both of these scenarios, which seem to be different types of problems, have one common solution: aggregation. At first, it seems like the contact issue is solved with synchronization (and there are times that is helpful, where I want to have that information available to every service), but really, what I want is to have one common “view” into the aggregated contacts of ALL of my contact services.
The same is true of the inbound data – why should I have to read Tweets separately from emails, separate from Facebook status updates, separate from blog posts? Ultimately, it’s all incoming feed data, and I should be able to view it abstracted away from the source platform. I honestly believe that the platform of delivery is not relevant to the message.
This is what “Web 3.0” is going to be all about, mark my words. Web 1.0 was about publishing – creating content and delivering it in a simple form, to be consumed in a one-way fashion. Web 2.0 brought us the “social” side of content – feedback and engagement, but really, it’s all about sharing. Well, guess what – we’ve started “sharing” so much that there’s a glut. We are overloaded with shared content – but we’re looking at it in lots of different places. I really think that the next phase of technology is going to be about getting data consolidated. Web 3.0 is going to be the aggregation story.
There are already signs of this. Look at all the buzz about the new Palm Pre smartphone – one of the major selling points is that it consolidates all of your various address books into a single one, with no duplicates. This is not a syncro solution – it’s aggregation. Consider Google Wave – it’s based upon the idea of abstracting all communication outside of the “email” and “IM” siloes into one location. FriendFeed is also built upon the concept of creating one timeline to track all content coming from people you are interested in. All of this points to the fact that aggregation is where it is at.
So what do I think the ultimate aggregator would be like? I want a single dashboard where I can stream in all of my incoming information. Actually, I think “dashboard” is the wrong term – that implies multiple widgets or areas dedicated to each stream/data source. I want a single timeline that streams all of the information and updates together.
However, I should be able to filter this timeline dynamically and on-demand. I might not want to see everything all at once – that would be overload. This filtering should be based upon content and people – not on the information platform. I want to be able to, for example, see all blog posts, twitter updates, Facebook statuses, Flickr pictures, etc, from a group of people, for example – or filter it based upon content. But again, content is abstracted away from the platform of delivery. I see no value in breaking things up by whether they are from Twitter or Facebook – but rather, based upon WHO they are from, or WHAT they are about. The HOW is the least important thing, and of limited to no value to filter upon.
FriendFeed tries REALLY hard to be this timeline. But there’s a problem – I can only stream in updates and information from people who publish to FriendFeed. I can’t add tweets from users who don’t use FriendFeed, or include blog posts from authors who don’t subscribe to that service. It’s going in the wrong direction – it’s aggregation for the publisher, not the subscriber.
One final note – this service should be cloud-based – that is, I should be able to consume and access this information and timeline from any device that is internet connected. Most aggregators already are smart in this way – Google Reader (which only aggregates RSS feeds) keeps my configuration and state accross any device that I use to access it. FriendFeed operates similarly. However, applications like TweetDeck (which can be used to aggregate Twitter and Facebook updates) use local configurations, which means that not only are my filterings and groupings not available on any computer I use, but my state also will change. This creates new problems of data/information management instead of solving them.
I realize this started to come across as a “wish list” for a service that may not exist yet (although I’m sure someone will tell me of one if it does). My intent isn’t to find this service, or even to create it…yet. My point is to identify the value of aggregation, and why I think that we are going to see it being the most important concept in the next “wave” (no pun intended) of user technology. It may not be identified as “aggregation” (perhaps it will have some sexy name along the lines of “social networking”, like “consolidated media”), but mark my words – at the base, it will be all about aggregation.