Personal InfoCloud

Social Tools Need to Embrace Granularity

What we have is partial likes in others and their interests and offerings. Our social tools have yet to grasp this and the few that do have only taken small steps to get there (I am rather impressed with Jaiku and their granular listening capability for their feed aggregation, which should be the starting point for all feed aggregators). Part of grasping the problem is a lack of quickly understanding the complexity, which leads to deconstructing and getting to two variables: 1) people (their identities online and their personas on various services) and 2) interests. These two elements and their combinations can (hopefully) be seen in the quick annotated video of one of my slides I have been using in presentations and workshops lately.

Showing Granular Social Network

Granular Social Network from Thomas Vander Wal on Vimeo.

The Granular Social Network begins with one person, lets take the self, and the various interest we have. In the example I am using just five elements of interest (work, music, movies, food, and biking). These are interest we have and share information about that we create or find. This sharing may be on one service or across many services and digital environments. The interests are taken as a whole as they make up our interests (most of us have more interests than five and we have various degrees of interest, but I am leaving that out for the sake of simplicity).

Connections with Others

Our digital social lives contain our interests, but as it is social it contains other people who are our contacts (friends is presumptive and gets in the way of understanding). These contacts have and share some interests in common with us. But, rarely do the share all of the same interest, let alone share the same perspective on these interests.

Mapping Interests with Contacts

But, we see when we map the interests across just six contacts that this lack of fully compatible interests makes things a wee bit more complicated than just a simple broadline friend. Even Facebook and their touted social graph does not come close to grasping this granularity as it is still a clumsy tool for sharing, finding, claiming, and capturing this granularity. If we think about trying a new service that we enjoy around music we can not easily group and capture then try to identify the people we are connected to on that new service from a service like Facebook, but using another service focussed on that interest area it could be a little easier.

When we start mapping our own interest back to the interest that other have quickly see that it is even more complicated. We may not have the same reciprocal interest in the same thing or same perception or context as the people we connect to. I illustrate with the first contact in yellow that we have interest in what they share about work or their interest in work, even though they are not stating or sharing that information publicly or even in selective social means. We may e-mail, chat in IM or talk face to face about work and would like to work with them in some manner. We want to follow what they share and share with them in a closer manner and that is what this visual relationship intends to mean. As we move across the connections we see that the reciprocal relationships are not always consistent. We do not always want to listen to all those who are sharing things, with use or the social collective in a service or even across services.

Focus On One Interest

Taking the complexity and noise out of the visualization the focus is placed on just music. We can easily see that there are four of our six contacts that have interest in music and are sharing their interest out. But, for various reasons we only have interests in what two of the four contacts share out. This relationship is not capturing what interest our contacts have in what we are sharing, it only captures what they share out.

Moving Social Connections Forward

Grasping this as a relatively simple representation of Granular Social Networks allows for us to begin to think about the social tools we are building. They need to start accounting for our granular interests. The Facebook groups as well as listserves and other group lists need to grasp the nature of individuals interests and provide the means to explicitly or implicitly start to understand and use these as filter options over time. When we are discussing portable social networks this understanding has be understood and the move toward embracing this understanding taken forward and enabled in the tools we build. The portable social network as well as social graph begin to have a really good value when the who is tied with what and why of interest. We are not there yet and I have rarely seen or heard these elements mentioned in the discussions.

One area of social tools where I see this value beginning to surface in through tagging for individuals to start to state (personally I see this as a private or closed declaration that only the person tagging see with the option of sharing with the person being tagged, or at least have this capability) the reasons for interest. But, when I look at tools like Last.fm I am not seeing this really taking off and I hear people talking about not fully understanding tagging as as it sometimes narrows the interest too narrowly. It is all an area for exploration and growth in understanding, but digital social tools, for them to have more value for following and filtering the flows in more manageable ways need to more in grasping this more granular understanding of social interaction between people in a digital space.

Selective Sociality of Villages

The piece that resonated along similar threads to Robert's post is Susan Mernit's "Twitter & Friend Feed: The Pleasure of Permissions". Susan's post brings to light the value of knowing who you are sharing information with and likes the private or permission-based options that both Twitter and FriendFeed offer. This selective sociality as known Local InfoCloud of people and resources that are trusted and known, which we use as resources. In this case it is not only those with whom we listen to and query, but those with whom we share. This knowing who somebody is (to some degree) adds comfort, which is very much like Robert Patterson and Luis Suarez#039; villages where people know each other and there is a lot of transparency. Having pockets where our social armor is down and we can be free to share and participate in our lives with others we know and are familiar to us is valuable.

I am found these two pieces quite comforting as they reflect much of what I see in the physical community around me as well as the work environments I interact with of clients and collaborators. The one social web service I have kept rather private is Twitter and I really want to know who someone is before I will accept them as a connection. This has given me much freedom to share silly (down right stupid - in a humorous way) observations and statements. This is something I hear from other adults around kids playgrounds and practices of having more select social interactions on line in the services and really wanting to connect with people whom they share interests and most often have known (or followed/listened to) for sometime before formally connecting. Most often these people want to connect with the same people on various services they are trying out, based on recommendation (and often are leaving a service as their friends are no longer there or the service does not meet their needs) of people whom they trust. This is the core of the masses who have access and are not early adopters, but have some comfort with the web and computers and likely make up 80 to 90 percent of web users.

Inline Messaging

Here is where things are horribly broken. The closed services (except Twitter) will let you know you have a message on their service on your choice of communication channel (e-mail, SMS, or RSS), but not all offer all options. When a message arrives for you in the service the service pings you in the communication channel to let you know you have a message. But, rather than give you the message it points you back to the website to the message (Facebook does provide SMS chunked messages, but not e-mail). This means they are sending a message to a platform that works really well for messaging, just to let you know you have a message, but not deliver that message. This adds extra steps for the people using the service, rather than making a simple streamlined service that truly connects people.

Part of this broken interaction is driven by Americans building these services and having desktop-centric and web views and forgetting mobile is not only a viable platform for messaging, but the most widely used platform around the globe. I do not think the iPhone, which have been purchased by the owners and developers of these services, will help as the iPhone is an elite tool, that is not like the messaging experience for the hundreds of millions of mobile users around the globe. Developers not building or considering services for people to use on the devices or application of their choice is rather broken development these days. Google gets it with Google Gears and their mobile efforts as does Yahoo with its Yahoo Mobile services and other cross platform efforts.

Broken Interaction Means More Money?

I understand the reasoning behind the services adding steps and making the experience painful, it is seen as money in their pockets through pushing ads. The web is a relatively means of tracking and delivering ads, which translates into money. But, inflicting unneeded pain on their customers can not be driven by money. Pain on customers will only push them away and leave them with fewer people to look at the ads. I am not advocating giving up advertising, but moving ads into the other channels or building solutions that deliver the messages to people who want the messages and not just notification they have a message.

These services were somewhat annoying, but they have value in the services to keep somebody going back. When Pownce arrived on the scene a month or so ago, it included the broken messaging, but did not include mobile or RSS feeds. Pownce only provides e-mail notifications, but they only point you back to the site. That is about as broken as it gets for a messaging and status service. Pownce is a beautiful interface, with some lightweight sharing options and the ability to build groups, and it has a lightweight desktop applications built on Adobe AIR. The AIR version of Pownce is not robust enough with messaging to be fully useful. Pownce is still relatively early in its development, but they have a lot of fixing of things that are made much harder than they should be for consuming information. They include Microfomats on their pages, where they make sense, but they are missing the step of ease of use for regular people of dropping that content into their related applications (putting a small button on the item with the microformat that converts the content is drastically needed for ease of use). Pownce has some of the checkboxes checked and some good ideas, but the execution of far from there at the moment. They really need to focus on ease of use. If this is done maybe people will comeback and use it.

Good Examples

So who does this well? Twitter has been doing this really well and Jaiku does this really well on Nokia Series60 phones (after the first version Series60). Real cross platform and cross channel communication is the wave of right now for those thinking of developing tools with great adoption. The great adoption is viable as this starts solving technology pain points that real people are experiencing and more will be experiencing in the near future. (Providing a solution to refindability is the technology pain point that del.icio.us solved.) The telecoms really need to be paying attention to this as do the players in all messaging services. From work conversations and attendees to the Personal InfoCloud presentation, they are beginning to get the person wants and needs to be in control of their information across devices and services.

Twitter is a great bridge between web and mobile messaging. It also has some killer features that add to this ease of use and adoption like favorites, friends only, direct messaging, and feeds. Twitter gets messaging more than any other service at the moment. There are things Twitter needs, such as groups (selective messaging) and an easier means of finding friends, or as they are now appropriately calling it, people to follow.

Can we not all catch up to today's messaging needs?

Now With More Complexity

But, what we have today is even more complex and difficult as we are often holding conversation across many of these technologies. The communication streams (the back and forth communication between two or more people) are now often not contained in on communication channel (channel is the flavor or medium used to communicate, such as AIM, SMS, Twitter, e-mail, mobile phone, etc.).

We are seeing our communications move across channels, which can be good as this is fluid and keeping with our digital presence. More often than not we are seeing our communication streams fracture across channels. This fracturing becomes really apparent when we are trying to reconstruct our communication stream. I am finding this fracturing and attempting to stitch the stream back together becoming more and more common as for those who are moving into and across many applications and devices with their own messaging systems.

The communication streams fracture as we pick-up an idea or need from Twitter, then direct respond in Twitter that moves it to SMS, the SMS text message is responded back to in regular SMS outside of Twitter, a few volleys back and forth in SMS text, then one person leaves a voicemail, it is responded to in an e-mail, there are two responses back and forth in e-mail, an hour later both people are on Skype and chat there, in Skype chat they decide to meet in person.

Why Do We Want to Stitch the Communication Stream Together?

When they meet there is a little confusion over there being no written overview and guide. Both parties are sure they talked about it, but have different understandings of what was agreed upon. Having the communication fractured across channels makes reconstruction of the conversation problematic today. The conversation needs to be stitched back together using time stamps to reconstruct everything [the misunderstanding revolved around recommendations as one person understands that to mean a written document and the other it does not mean that].

Increasingly the reality of our personal and professional lives is this cross channel communication stream. Some want to limit the problem by keeping to just one channel through the process. While this is well intentioned it does not meet reality of today. Increasingly, the informal networking leads to meaningful conversations, but the conversations drifts across channels and mediums. Pushing a natural flow, as it currently stands, does not seem to be the best solution in the long run.

Why Does Conversation Drift Across Channels?

There are a few reasons conversations drift across channels and mediums. One reason is presence as when two people notice proximity on a channel they will use that channel to communicate. When a person is seen as present, by availability or recently posting a message in the service, it can be a prompt to communicate. Many times when the conversation starts in a presence channel it will move to another channel or medium. This shift can be driven by personal preference or putting the conversation in a medium or channel that is more conducive for the conversation style between people involved. Some people have a preferred medium for all their conversations, such as text messaging (SMS), e-mail, voice on phone, video chat, IM, etc.. While other people have a preferred medium for certain types of conversation, like quick and short questions on SMS, long single responses in e-mail, and extended conversations in IM. Some people prefer to keep their short messages in the channel where they begin, such as conversations that start in Facebook may stay there. While other people do not pay attention to message or conversation length and prefer conversations in one channel over others.

Solving the Fractured Communication Across Channels

Since there are more than a few reasons for the fractured communications to occur it is something that needs resolution. One solution is making all conversations open and use public APIs for the tools to pull the conversations together. This may be the quickest means to get to capturing and stitching the conversation thread back together today. While viable there are many conversations in our lives that we do not want public for one reason or many.

Another solution is to try to keep your conversations in channels that we can capture for our own use (optimally this should be easily sharable with the person we had the conversation with, while still remaining private). This may be where we should be heading in the near future. Tools like Twitter have become a bridge between web and SMS, which allows us to capture SMS conversations in an interface that can be easily pointed to and stitched back together with other parts of a conversation. E-mail is relatively easy to thread, if done in a web interface and/or with some tagging to pull pieces in from across different e-mail addresses. Skype chat also allows for SMS interactions and allows for them to be captured, searched, and pulled back together. IM conversations can easily be saved out and often each item is time stamped for easy stitching. VoIP conversations are often easily recorded (we are asking permission first, right?) and can be transcribed by hand accurately or be transcribed relatively accurately via speech-to-text tools. Voice-mail can now be captured and threaded using speech-to-text services or even is pushed as an attachment into e-mail in services as (and similar to) JConnect.

Who Will Make This Effortless?

There are three types of service that are or should be building this stitching together the fractured communications across channels into one threaded stream. I see tools that are already stitching out public (or partially public) lifestreams into one flow as one player in this pre-emergent market (Facebook, Jaiku, etc.). The other public player would be telecoms (or network provider) companies providing this as a service as they currently are providing some of these services, but as their markets get lost to VoIP, e-mail, on-line community messaging, Second Life, etc., they need to provide a service that keeps them viable (regulation is not a viable solution in the long run). Lastly, for those that do not trust or want their conversation streams in others hands the personally controlled application will become a solutions, it seems that Skype could be on its way to providing this.

Is There Demand Yet?

I am regularly fielding questions along these lines from enterprise as they are trying to deal with these issues for employees who have lost or can not put their hands on vital customer conversations or essential bits of information that can make the difference in delivering what their customers expect from them. Many have been using Cisco networking solutions that have some of these capabilities, but still not providing a catch all. I am getting queries from various telecom companies as they see reflections of where they would like to be providing tools in a Come to Me Web or facilitating bits of the Personal InfoCloud. I am getting requests from many professionals that want this type of solution for their lives. I am also getting queries from many who are considering building these tools, or pieces of them.

Some of us need these solutions now. Nearly all of us will need these solutions in the very near future.

The Great Nuggets

I will (uncharacteristically) begin with the things I like with the analysis that I have not seen elsewhere. It is also appropriate to mention I love LibraryThing as it is really an innovative approach to organization of one's own things and there are many things it does that are done very well.

The first bit that is really good is the difference on LibraryThing in the use of tags based on the number of items in a person's collection.  The more items the great the probability that person will use tags.  The more items in a persons collections the greater number of tags they use.  Tim states it as,

Tags work best when they're about memory, so tagging makes the most sense when you have a lot of something to remember. On LibraryThing, members with under 50 books seldom tag, but users with 200 or more usually do. When you get right down to it, few of us need to remember 200 books on Amazon.

This is really good, because it points out that there is a trend toward people using tags when their collection of objects grows. Two of the reasons people tag (of many) is to aggregate as well as sort information.  It is building hooks to pull things together that are similar. It is a flat organizational structure.

Ironically, the other really good point is the core of why I think the analysis is really flawed:

In fairness, Amazon didn't give tagging a lot of prominence. Tags were stuck in the middle of their ever-lengthening book page—one section for adding your own tags, another for showing others' tags. They didn$#039;t push them very hard.

Oddly this bit is one of many reasons why the analysis does not hold up. It is really important to grasp that there are many different reasons why people tag. For tagging to work it needs to scale, but getting people to tag takes work through explanation and examples. Not only did tagging not have prevalence on the page, but tagging was not in all user interfaces as of 7 months ago on US Amazon site.

Apple to Oranges

The major problem with the analysis is the comparison is being made on 2 vastly different products, with 2 vastly different uses, with 2 vastly different points of focus.

First Order of Functionality

The first order of functionality for both sites/products is vastly different.  LibraryThing puts its functionality focus on people organizing their book (and other media) collections online.  Tagging is central to what LibraryThing does and its means to enable organization. It is for people to claim and organize what they own, share that with others, and find related materials.

Amazon has it first order of functionality around people buying products they want. From this point Amazon uses other tools to ensure the person is buying what they want or believes they want.  Tagging is not central to the first order of functionality for Amazon, but it can and is being used to help people find products. People are not organizing their collection on Amazon, well as of yet.

Options for Similar Input

The two sites compared have very different sets of tools and the numbers of options are vastly different.  The length of time the other options have been in existence is nearly an order of magnitude different. LibraryThing has puts its primary focus on tagging and ratings, while it offers the ability to have people write a review very few people people seem to write them (I would not dare say reviews are a failure on LibraryThing as they are helpful). With the focus on tagging and ratings and with few other options to manage the collection it is no wonder tagging took off.

Amazon has been around for much longer and has offered reviews, ratings, wish lists, shopping lists, sharing purchases, listmania, registries, customer discussions about the product, search suggestions, share with friends, wiki pages for products, etc.  The reviews and ratings are the two things that people using Amazon are most familiar with as they have been around for many years. All of these elements are social web means for people to comment, track (all reviews on on the identity page for the individual).  Tagging has not had anything close to the prominence on the Amazon product pages or the site as it does in LibraryThing, due to the other options and the years of habitual use of the other options.

Amazon, only in recent months, has given tagging a little more prominence on the product pages. Amazon is still iterating drastically what they are doing with tags as screen captures over the past six months (even going back 18 months) will show.  Their current iterations are really are moving toward utterly brilliant interactions in some areas (I have done a couple hour long impromptu presentations on the depth of what Amazon is doing with tagging and how it seems to be making a difference - this may become another post, but it will be really long even for my norm).

Availability of Tagging in the Tools

One of the claims that bothered me most was the claim that Amazon and LibraryThing has roughly had tagging for the same amount of time.  As of 7 months ago I had people showing me they did not have tagging functionality in the Amazon page interface. Tagging on Amazon is only available on the United States Amazon site, as far as I can tell. Claiming the date that when tagging first appeared on the Amazon product pages for some of us, it even seems to have disappeared for a while, is not really a solid claim to make. Again it is another really weak comparison.

Related to the last major point made, options for similar input, the adoption rates for new tools for people using Amazon has been relatively slow. But, the tools quickly make difference and become valuable. One example of tools is Amazon's Listmania.  This has been on the Amazon site, rather prominently, for many years but many people (the people whom I am talk to about Amazon tagging and their uses of it) have not noticed it. This is directly related to the other features that do know. But, for Amazon the Listmania has been a really successful tool for increased sales.

Mis-understanding of DefectiveByDesign

The analysis claimed the "DefectiveByDesign was spam by a few people. But, the 501 people currently using the tag 5809 times across 1063 products may have a different view.  The dominant use of the tag is for items that have copy protection and/or DRM. Talking to people who do use Amazon tags, this is often one of the tags people find very helpful as it is a tag for missing metadata about a product.  None of the product pages state the OS will not let you copy your own media you have bought or the CD you bought will not let you copy it so to put it on your iPod (which is where you listen to all of your music). This tag is not spam and for many people I have talked with about tagging on Amazon has been how people found out about Amazon tags and the value it has for them personally.

Tagging in Amazon is True Longtail Commerce

One of the things that Amazon is doing really well with tagging, not covered in the analysis piece at all, is helping people interested in the LongTail products connect and share recommendations.  Because of changes in the interface that Amazon has been iterating through (there are many more potential possibilities where Amazon tagging could really soar) more people are using the tagging to connect products not normally connected.  One tag that has been around for a while is "discomusic dot com top pick", which is a great hook for the longtail as it is the picks from a site and putting them in a context that helps join disparate items together. The Amazon tag page for discomusic dot com top pick is a great jumping off point for beginning to grasp the insane power that one variation of use for tags has within commerce.

Personal Planets

Why a personal planet? We have an incredible amount of information that passes before out eyes and that is generated by our simple actions.  Emily did a great job showing the breadth of feeds generated.  This seems a simple thin thread.  What if we could quickly scan that thread and annotate it to make it easier to refind.

Planets are relatively easy to build and it should be easy to share for others to build upon. Personally, I am really surprised there are not thousands of these out there already.  Now to start tinkering a wee bit this week.

The Information

Not only does the software have to be simple to access information in our Personal InfoCloud (the information that we have stated we want and need near us, but have structured in our personal framework of understanding). We also interact with the Local InfoCloud with is information sources that is familiar to us to which we have set a means of easing interaction (cognitively, physically, or mechanically).

This "intelligence" that Ballmer refers to is information in the form of data. It needs to be structured to make solid use of that information in our lives. This structure needs to ascend below the page level to at least the object level. The object level can be a photo with the associated metadata (caption, photographer, rights, permanent source, size, etc.), event information (event name, location, date and time, permanent location of the information, organizer, etc.), full-text and partial-text access (title, author, contact info, version, date published, rights, headers, paragraphs, etc.).

These objects may comprise a page or document on the web, but they not only have value as a whole, they have value as discrete objects. The web is a transient information store for data and media, it is a place to rest this information and object on its journey of use and reuse. People use and want (if not need) to use these objects in their lives. Their lives are comprised of various devices with various pieces of software that work best in their life. They want to track events, dates, people, ideas, media, memes, experts, friends, industries, finances, workspaces, competition, collaborators, entertainment, etc. as part of their regular lives. This gets very difficult when there is an ever growing flood of information and data bombarding us daily, hourly, consistently.

This is not a future problem. This is a problem right now! The information pollution is getting worse every moment we sit here. How do we dig through the information? How do we make sense of the information? How do we hold on to the information?

The solutions is using the resources we have at our finger tips. We need access to the object level data and the means to attach hooks to this data. One solution that is rising up is Microformats, which Ray Ozzie of Microsoft embraces and has been extending with his Live Clipboard, which is open for all (yes all operating systems and all applications) to use, develop, and extend. The web, as a transient information store, must be open to all comers (not walled off for those with a certain operating system, media player, browser, certain paid software, etc.) if the information is intended for free usage (I am seeing Microsoft actually understand this and seemingly embrace this).

Once we have the information and media we can use it and reuse it as we need. But, as we all know information and media is volatile, as it changes (for corrections, updates, expanding, etc.) and we need to know that what we are using and reusing is the best and more accurate information. We need the means to aggregate the information and sync the information when it changes. In our daily lives if we are doing research on something we want to buy and we bookmark it, should we not have the capability to get updates on the prices of the item? We made an explicit connection to that item, which at least conveys interest. Is it not in the interest of those selling the information to make sure we have the last price, if not changes to that product? People want and need this. It needs to be made simple. Those that get this right will win in the marketplace.

What is Standing in the Way?

So, the big question is, "what is standing in the way"? To some degree it is the tools with which we create the information and some of it is people not caring about the information, data, and media they expose.

The tools many of the large information providers are using are not up to the task. Many of the large content management systems (CMS) do not provide simple data structures. The CMS focusses on the end points (the devices, software, tools, etc.) not the simple data structures that permit simple efficient use and reuse of the objects. I have witnessed far too many times a simple web page that is well structured that is relatively small (under 40KB) get turned into an utter mess that is unstructured and large (over 200KB). Usable, parseable, and grabable information is broken by the tools. The tools focus on what looks good and not what is good. Not only is the structure of the data and objects broken, but they are no longer addressable. There are very few CMS that get it right, or let the developers get it right (one that gets it right is Axiom [open disclosure: I have done work with Siteworx the developer of Axiom]).

The other part of the problem is the people problem, which is often driven by not understanding the medium they are working within. They are focus on the tools, which are far from perfect and don't care enough to extend the tools to do what they should. Knowing the proper format for information, data, media, etc. on the web is a requirement for working on the web, not something that would be nice to learn someday. Implementing, building, and/or creating tools or content for the web requires understanding the medium and the structures that are inherent to building that well. I have had far too many discussions with people who do not understand the basics of the web nor the browser, which makes it nearly impossible to explain why their implementation fails. Content on the web has requirements to be structured well and the pages efficiently built. The pages need to degrade (not with an $80,000 plug-in) by default. Media on the web that is for open consumption must work across all modern systems (this should be a 3 year window if not longer for the "modern" definition).

Summary

So what is the take away from this? Content needs to be built with proper structure to the sub-object level (objects need the metadata attached and in standard formats). The content needs to be open and easily accessed. Portability of the information into the tools people use that put information in our pockets and lives must be done now. We have the technology now to do this, but often it is the poorly structured or formatted information, data, media, etc. that stands in the way. We know better and for those that don't know yet the hurdle is quite low and easy to cross.

The I Go Get Web

Before we look at the "Come to Me" web we should look at what preceded it. The "I Go Get" metaphor for the web was the precursor. In this incarnation we sought their information. The focus was on the providers of the content and the people consuming the information (or users) were targeted and lured in, in the extreme people were drawn in regardless of a person's interest in the information or topic covered. The content was that of the the organization or site that provided that information.

This incarnation focussed on people accessing the information on one device, usually the desktop computer. Early on the information was developed for proprietary formats. Each browser variant had their own proprietary way of doing things, based around a few central markup tags. People had to put up with the "best view with on X browser" messages. Information was also distributed in various other proprietary formats that required software on the device just so the person could get the information.

The focus providing information was to serve one goal (or use) reading. Some of this was driven by software limitations. But it was also an extension of information distribution in the analog physical space (as opposed to the digital space). In the physical space the written word was distributed on paper and it was consumed by reading (reuse of it meant copying it for reading) and it took physical effort to reconstruct those words to repurpose that information (quoting sources, showing examples, etc.).

The focus was on information creation and the struggle was making it findable. On the web there were only limited central resources used to find information, as many of the search engines were not robust enough, did not have friendly interfaces. Findability was a huge undertaking, either to get people what they desired/needed or to "get eyeballs".

Just as the use of the information was an extension of the physical realm that predated the digital information environment, the dominant metaphor in the "I Go Get" web was based in the physical realm. We all designed and developed for findability around the navigation/wayfinding metaphor. This directly correlates to going somewhere. Cues we use to get us to information were patterned and developed from practices in the physical world.

Physical? Digital? Does it Matter?

You ask, "So what we used ideas from the physical world to develop our metaphors and methodologies for web design and development?" We know that metaphors guide our practices. This is a very good thing. But, metaphors also constrain our practices and can limit our exploration for solutions to those that fit within the boundaries of that metaphor. In the physical realm we have many constraints that do not exist in the digital realm. Objects are not constrained by the resources they are made from (other than the energy to drive digital realm - no power no digital realm). Once an object exists in the digital realm replicating them is relatively insignificant (just copy it).

Paths and connections between information and objects is not constrained by much, other than humans choosing to block its free flow (firewalls, filtering, limiting access to devices, etc.). Much like Peter Merholz desire lines where people wear the path between two places in a manner that works best for them (the shortest distance between two points is a straight line). Now, don't think of the physical limitation between two points, I need to go from my classroom on the fourth floor of building "X" to across campus, up the hill to the sixth floor office of my professor. Draw a straight line and walk directly. This does not work in physical space because of gravity and physical impediments.

Now we are ready to understand what really happens on the web. We go from the classroom to our professors office, but we don't move. The connection brings what we desire to us and our screen. In this case we may just chat (text or video - it does not matter) with the professor from our seat in the classroom (if we even need to be in the classroom). Connections draw objects to our screens through the manifestation of links. As differently as people's minds work to connect ideas together, there can be as many paths between two objects. Use of physical space is limited by limitations outlined in physics, but the limitations are vastly different in digital space, use of the same information and media has vastly different limitations also.

It is through breaking the constraints of old metaphors and letting the digital realm exist that we get to a new understanding of digital information on the networks of the digital realm, which include the web.

The Come to Me Web

The improved understanding of the digital realm and its possibilities beyond our metaphors of the physical environment allows us to focus on a "Come to Me" web. What many people are doing today with current technologies is quite different than was done four or five years ago. This is today for some and will be the future for many.

When you talk to people about information and media today they frame it is terms of, "my information", "my media", and "my collection". This label is applied to not only information they created, but information they have found and read/used. The information is with them in their mind and more often than not it is on one or more of their devices drives, either explicitly saved or in cache.

Many of us as designers and developers have embraced "user-centered" or "user experience" design as part of our practice. These mantras place the focus on the people using our tools and information as we have moved to making what we produce "usable". The "use" in "usable" goes beyond the person just reading the information and to meeting peoples desires and needs for reusing information. Microformats and Structured Blogging are two recent projects (among many) that focus on and provide for reuse of information. People can not only read the information, but can easily drop the information into their appropriate application (date related information gets put in the person's calendar, names and contact information are easily dropped into the address book, etc.). These tools also ease the finding and aggregating of the content types.

As people get more accustom to reusing information and media as they want and need, they find they are not focussed on just one device (the desktop/laptop), but many devices across their life. They have devices at work, at home, mobile, in their living space and they want to have the information that they desire to remain attracted to them no matter where they are. We see the proliferation of web-based bookmarking sites providing people access their bookmarks/favorites from any web browser on any capable device. We see people working to sync their address books and calendars between devices and using web-based tools to help ensure the information is on the devices near them. People send e-mail and other text/media messages to their various devices and services so information and files are near them. We are seeing people using their web-based or web-connected calendars to program settings on their personal digital video recorders in their living room (or wherever it is located).

Keeping information attracted to one's self or within easy reach, not only requires the information and media be available across devices, but to be in common or open formats. We have moved away from a world where all of our information and media distribution required developing for a proprietary format to one where standards and open formats prevail. Even most current proprietary formats have non-proprietary means of accessing the content or creating the content. We can do this because application protocols interfaces (APIs) are made available for developers or tools based on the APIs can be used to quickly and easily create, recreate, or consume the information or media.

People have moved from finding information and media as being their biggest hurdle, to refinding things in "my collection" being the biggest problem. Managing what people come across and have access to (or had access to) again when they want it and need it is a large problem. In the "come to me" web there is a lot of filtering of information, as we have more avenues to receive information and media.

The metaphor and model in the "I go get" web was navigation and wayfinding. In the "come to me" web a model based on attraction. This is not the push and pull metaphor from the late 1990s (as that was mostly focussed on single devices and applications). Today's usage is truly focussed on the person and how they set their personal information workflow for digital information. The focus is slightly different. Push and pull focussed on technology, today the focus is on person and technology is just the conduit, which could (and should) fade into the background. The conduits can be used to filter information that is not desired so what is of interest is more easily identified.