October 3, 2009 34 Comments

The Muddy Fractured Web

mud This is a jumble of techie thoughts, and won’t necessarily appeal to everyone. Just the same, it’s on my mind.

I was thinking about an old article that quoted Joshua Schachter, founder of Delicious, where he talked about how he organized his site to have obvious syntax. He said, that once you get the hang of it, it became very easy to use the site, even from a browser window. Example: If I want to read any pages saved with the tag “chrisbrogan”, I can search http://delicious.com/tag/chrisbrogan . Now, replace my name with whatever else you want to search up on the address bar of your browser, and you pretty much know how to surf through Delicious without any effort.

For the record, Craigslist.org is like this. I can navigate it simply and from the address bar, and I understand what I’m searching out.

The entire concept of the URL, the uniform resource LOCATOR, was that we’d have a way to find resources (or web pages, or files, or whatever information) by way of coordinates that wouldn’t change.

Twitter introduced the need for URL shortening services. They were around before, but Twitter made them necessary. Now, they’re practically a business unto themselves.

And I’m thinking about projects like Glue and now Sidewiki (Google’s little “stick a wiki against any website but only if you’re using this application to see it” project). They’ve obfuscated the clarity of web pages. Okay, I get the notion of annotating the web. I understand the premise behind having ways to see things in our own way out in the wild web, but I think it messes up the point.

People had some real mixed emotions about Seth Godin’s Brands in Public project, but I couldn’t see the fuss. Seth just organized a bunch of information that was out there, and gave brands the opportunity to buy into his effort. The brands could’ve done all the work themselves. Seth saved them a step. The project, however, doesn’t create two webs. It just revisits this information in another format.

The splintering of commentary and conversations problem (how services like FriendFeed and Twitter and Facebook scatter our conversations all over the web instead of consolidating them) is real, and yet, it’s a matter of views. We’re interacting with data where we consume it, which is sensible enough. The missing tech, actually, is just the ability to get those comments all corralled and easy to respond to in some way (and many companies are trying to make that easier).

So where does this take us?

First, I think abstraction is here to stay. I don’t think we’ll have simple URLs to remember for all things (wish it were, but it’s not). I think the trend of shorteners that supposedly add value is here for a while, too. I think the fractured conversation is here to stay.

Now, will this impact business? Not exactly. Instead, it will require us to pick our battles, to determine just how splintered and muddy we want to get to catch up every drop of conversational/business goodness, and it will require us to keep futurists and sages on speed dial (how quaint a term is that?).

Funny thing is: many will never even know this war is even being waged.

Photo credit Jared

No related posts.

ChrisBrogan.com runs on the Genesis Framework

Genesis Theme Framework

The Genesis Framework empowers you to quickly and easily build incredible websites with WordPress. Whether you're a novice or advanced developer, Genesis provides you with the secure and search-engine-optimized foundation that takes WordPress to places you never thought it could go.

With automatic theme updates and world-class support included, Genesis is the smart choice for your WordPress website or blog.

Become a StudioPress Affiliate

  • sytaylor

    Interesting post. I have a lowly 128 twitter follows, and keeping up with that stream can be a pain. There are maybe 5 or so websites that I have bookmarked as “Must Read Daily”, each with their own comments section or forum. Each Comments section can link back to your twitter, facebook or discuss account in some way. Five websites, with 3 forms of feedback… To be in those conversations I have 15 threads to follow.

    Then you consider old faithful internet message boards like vBulletin. I cut my teeth ALT+TAB'ing my way between browser windows and MSN conversations in 2000-2004. It made for a very interesting end to my teenage years, but was without doubt information overload, and came with it's own dollop of stress. Especially when you consider the days before broadband.

    Facebook came along and elegantly organised a network I already had; Real life friends. Then the internet came along and developed networks that form together around a common interest. These networks are much looser, and made of people who may never have met. Being heard, as part of a big heard isn't easy.

    On some level the sheer numbers involved compensate. There is always someone reading your comment. Yet the fundamental point here is that proprietary applications attempting to be the mouth of your river of information only end up making things worse. Interoperability and truly convergent API's are still some way off. For those of us in the conversation, good use of any “Sort” function in Tweetdeck is a solid starting point. Maybe Google Wave or an organisation service like Gist will help too…

    But this is 1994 for the Semantic Web and linked data, it will be another 5 to 10 years for the revolution. Speculation? Yes. But speculating is fun :o)

  • http://twitter.com/steve_e Steve Evans

    Too true and that's why aggregators and dashboards are doing so well right now. The disintermediated and increasingly fractured web calls for better organiser tools, mining tools and streams need more data facets. Still waiting for an AI stream reader that will solve my info consumption needs…

  • jeffcutler

    Chris,

    Your post underscores the reality that we're all consumers of everything that passes our eyes, ears,mind and pocketbooks.

    While the noise increases and the randomness seems to also grow, we are responsible for acting as filters.

    That's a good thing, I think.

    It makes us all take some role in our future instead of sitting passively and watching the world spin away. It gives us power to interact – or compels us to take time to interact. And it opens up doors to knowledge that we might have otherwise ignored.

    Nice thoughts.

    Hope the book continues to do well.

    See you next week in Foxboro.

  • Pingback: Scarcity of Signal. A Wifi-free journee. | Jeff Cutler's columns, essays and opinions

  • http://www.honeybeeconsulting.com startabuzz

    “Many will never even know this war is being waged.” I was JUST having a conversation about this very thing the other day, when Google launched Sidewiki. My feeling with IT (and I don't mean “information technology” … this is the actual word “IT” — and I explain that because I'm a total word dork. Forgive me) is that, if it takes off and people begin using it en masse, the conversation, so to speak, will be not just splintered, but completely broken. Is it neato bandito that we now have a way to comment on Seth's blog? Sure. But the neatness goes away when someone starts commenting on a comment, which makes its own thread, completely unrelated to the one of which it's a branch. If you're not using Sidewiki, as the author of a blog, you lose the ability to engage with readers. I find it all more than a little bothersome.

    Having a centralized outpost for ALL of our conversations is grossly unrealistic; I know this. But it would be nice to have the ability to see everything in one place. Sort of a Facefeedyoutweetumblerosterous THING.

    Good morning, Chris. :)

  • cocreatr

    Well, yes but. Realizing where I put and forgot about prior comments of mine tells me I scatter a part of my conversations all over the web too. Services like Disqus that you offer here, global IDs and threading technology help to find and focus.

    Too much scatter and reverb muddy up the sound indeed – the echo chamber. What would a balanced “acoustically engineered” web environment look like? A concert hall for the voices of the internets…

  • http://suzemuse.wordpress.com suzemuse

    The irony of the fractured web is that it's exactly the opposite of what Tim Berners-Lee intended. His TEDTalk on “The Next Web” http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_berners_lee_on_the… is a must-watch for anyone thinking about how information works on the Web and what the future holds.

    As Berners-Lee says, linked data is probably one of the most important things people can be not only thinking about, but doing right now. Do we have the technology in the back end to make sense of linked data at the moment? No. So that's where most people shut down. Why would I make my data available if there's no tool available to do anything with it? I say, why not? The people who are working on the tools need something to work with. Making data available will start to enable the linking process, and the contextual web can begin to move forward.

    Where I disagree is with your position that this fractured web impacts business. I believe that this trend has a tremendous impact on business, for the more diluted information becomes, the harder businesses will have to work to make sure their message is still getting through. But, it could be a blessing in disguise, too.

    I have heard Berners-Lee's message about linked data loud and clear. I think you've made a really fascinating point here – but I wonder if the fractured web isn't the next logical step in our progress – tearing it all apart, so it can be built back up to something that makes sense. We've got content, connection, and conversation pretty much down. The next great frontier of the Web is context.

    It's vitally important that we start having more conversations about this stuff.

  • Pingback: The Muddy Fractured Web | Blog Mixer

  • http://gerardmclean.com/ Gerard McLean

    My issue with Sidewiki: It is not a conversation if everyone is commenting. That is just a loud din. Sidewiki is a white noise generator.

  • ShellyKramer

    I think this is very insightful, Chris, and agree. It is no longer a matter of being able to know “everything” that is going on on a daily basis, but a matter of stepping into whatever streams you use, prefer, trust, etc., and getting the info you want and need. This is very much the age of distraction and, like you, I don't see that changing. Kind of like how we all used to get along just fine without cell phones clenched in our sweaty little hands – we could actually make it from the office to home without taking, making or needing a phone. And if we did, if it was a real emergency, we found one and pulled over. We were just fine – never knew what we were “missing.” Then, along came the cell phone and voila, we all became that gross person who can't go anywhere without a phone. My point is this – times were more simple, we got distracted by cell phones. And compared to the distracted information age that we're now experiencing, that early cell phone distraction was a tiny blip on the radar screen. So no, we're not going back – ever. And, you are also correct in the statement that there will be many who never notice. I wonder who the luckier ones are? Great job of inspiring thought.

  • http://gerardmclean.com/ Gerard McLean

    I love the concept of “publish once, reflect everywhere” I love the concept of “change once, reflect everywhere” even more which would be really cool if folks would adopt that. Right now, with some technical skill, we can use RSS, Javascript, curl, XML-RPC, etc to kinda get there. Everyone seems to have a tool to do about 90% of something, just good enough, but doesn't integrate with anything else easily and so there is a lot of double entry. It gets tedious and away from the promise of technology freeing up our time.

    Writing blog posts is fun, but then there is a whole array of bulls**t to do afterwards. Digg, Tweet, delicious, Facebook, LinkedIn, blah, blah, blah each with it's own set of criteria to submit. (Some of this is automated, I know, but it is WAY too scattered. And, sometimes I don't want to post to my Facebook profile or posterous or tumblr.) Keeping track of these details well is what makes some really good people really bad at social media.

    Another concept that is screwing all this up is maintaining multiple identities. I own various brands/companies in diverse categories. What is appropriate for one may not be for another. This necessitates multiple twitter accounts, Facebook profiles, pages, etc. The developing powers of the Web seem to believe that the only right identity is your own biological one and everything must be collected under one roof, i.e., FriendFeed and the like. Things get easy when you do that, but exceedingly complex when you must maintain multiple identities; not to hide or or defraud, but to keep from confusing folks in different camps.

    As I am writing this comment, Disqus is sending me via email comments of other people commenting on this post. I don't know how to shut that damn faucet off! But I sure as heck know I don't want the email. I want to read comments here. In my quest for simplicity through automation, I am now a slave to the Disqus rules. (I know there is a simple way, but there is a simple — and radically different way — for EVERY small service with the promise of reducing my fractured, muddy Web.)

    While many hands may make light work, many hands connected to many brains connected to many egos and disconnected to many ears makes for a very fractured muddy Web. We're all trying to improve the process, but talk too much, create too much and listen too little.

  • max191

    I happen to enter your blog with the help of google search. To my sheer luck I got what I was searching for. Thanks
    regards
    charcoal grill

  • http://www.momdot.com/ trisha

    Chris, i know this isnt the right spot, but i saw your comment on another site where you said “thanks for blogging about it instead of asking me, it makes it more fun” and it literally made me bust out laughing.

  • http://www.willsloanonline.com/about/ Will Sloan

    And I got to this post via a URL shortener! ;) People will follow in the path of least resistance and sometimes what seems easy to some is complicated to most. I've tried explaining the purpose and use of a URL to non-technical or closed-minded people and they are baffled. This kind of process may be a cakewalk to people like us who roam the web with ease while other are actually happy staying within the confines of what they know and nothing more.

    I have a friend who use the internet solely for Facebook. There may be a possible Google search tossed in there every once in a while, but she will generally keep to what she's comfortable with. She represents the type of people who don't wish to challenge themselves with conforming to the known standards of the internet. It doesn't help that there are people busy creating shortcuts so she doesn't ever need to. Now these shortcuts are becoming the norm and it's the technical people that are having to dumb it down. Totally awesome!

  • http://www.virtualitassistants.com/ Amber Whitener

    It all starts with Google and their keywords, it evolves to blogs with their categories and tags – it's all about search-ability, and who gets the most accurate results. The only one I have been struggling with lately is technorati. :/ I like how they make you authenticate your submissions, but the systems they use may need to be developed into something more sophisticated. (Or else, I need to keep working at it :)

    If you love to work with technology, then you have to love a challenge too.

    How to make a site more visible.
    How to reach your target audience.
    How to setup your own site to make sure your visitors can get to what they need.
    How to find the business partners and friends you are looking for on your social network.

    The evolution of technology is all about making the information you are looking for “more” accessible right?

    Ok, totally done rambling ;) back to technorati.

  • robrose

    Interesting and thought provoking for sure. I loved this post – and all the comments that I read before commenting myself. Is it ironic that we're all posting comments here instead of blogging our own responses on our own centralized space and tracking back?

    I'm with ShellyKramer – I think those of us that deal with Web and technology every day can sometimes have our noses so close to the technology (and the distractions) that we forget that it's evolving right underneath us. And, that there's a whole great swath of people who don't know – and don't care. Ten years from now, we'll look back on this and say – “really, how did we ever get along with/without that”. And even more people will go – “I never missed it”.

    For now, it's up to us as part of our “process” not part of our technology to develop our own habits and ways of consuming and disseminating information and developing our own identities.

    Of course Clay Shirky has some great thinking here – in his point that it's not information overload – it's “filter failure”. Here's a wonderful piece on it (complete with video) from Web 2.0 earlier this year.

    http://bit.ly/rkW2 (see what I did there – irony duly noted)

    See ya'll around the disaggregated interwebz….

    ~rr

  • http://twitter.com/remarkablogger remarkablogger

    URLs are disappearing. Check out Chrome. The address bar is the search bar. Firefox's “superbar” moves in the same direction, but not as elegantly.

    Everything that's happening with this is the continuation of the truth laid down in the now venerable Cluetrain Manifesto: Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy.

    When Google becomes invisible, the war will be over.

  • Pingback: In response to the “muddy Web” | GerardMcLean.com

  • http://gerardmclean.com/ Gerard McLean

    @robrose To complete the ironic circle…
    http://gerardmclean.com/in-response-to-the-mudd…

    Now, just wondering if I should also cross-post on my tumblr, WordPress.com blog, posterous, Facebook……. :-)

  • http://www.virtualitassistants.com/ Amber Whitener

    LOL, I have been thinking the exact same thing! You have influenced my doing so. Thanks for saying it “out loud” guys.

  • lisahickey

    I, too, like CoCreatr, have had this vision in my head of the web becoming more like a Concert Hall or a symphony orchestra rather than a cacophony of fractured voices. It’s doubtful a large group of folks got together with a group of instruments and overnight figured out how to get that to work. But I don’t think it will be years before it happens. It will, I think, be part tech solution and part people who assume the role of “social media choregrapher”, a term coined by @edwardboches that I am enamored with lately. That is where the (one of the many) real business opportunity lies, in my opinion.

    The other thing is, I am SO in the minority, but I love the “muddy, fractured” web. I love what feels to me like an unweildy, cavernous, carnival of information. It just works for me. I love the fact that I have conversations all over the place and sometimes people respond in real time and sometimes they respond months later and sometimes not at all. This has fundamentally changed me as a person. The truth is, I used to be completely socially inept because I was scared to death about the ever-present necessity of having a conversation in the moment, where I couldn’t take the time I personally needed to process information. Now I have conversations all the time with brilliant people who a lifetime ago would have totally intimidated me. And guess what – seemingly overnight it changed my ability to have those real life, in the moment conversations as well.

    So – to get back to my orchestra analogy – if I were a tech person, I’d be looking at the notion of *timing* of information, as well placement. That is, sure, I'd think about where and how information is stored, but also can unfold on an ongoing basis so people can continue to process and make sense of it in not only logical but highly creative ways.

  • http://www.charleslau.com Charles Lau

    Chris, your post is not easy to understand today. I have read a few times just to understand it, but I think I have only been able to catch a glimpse of it. I thought you are talking about URL shorteners, but again it sounds like you are talking about a bunch of information being decentralized out there. However, here's my thoughts after reading your post:

    As there is always a next upcoming thing, it always leave a trail behind us to ponder about. I do believe that after your post here, some enterprising person out there may do something like what Seth Godin has done.

    Even as for individuals like myself, I always think it is so troublesome to update my status in so many places just because there is a community there to build. Hence, there are a lot of people like myself who chooses a certain social media website to focus on and build our community.

    As a result, I will tend to miss out things that people are not in the same social media website as me. Information has been spread out while nobody really cares about it and to consolidate them.

  • NeuronOutlaw

    The splintering is something I've been thinking about a lot lately. There are a lot of places to pay attention and I feel fairly divided sometimes. Hard to keep up.

  • HollyJahangiri

    Fractured, indeed. The novelty wears thin as information overload (an old, inadequate term) sets in. I love what Gerard wrote:

    “Writing blog posts is fun, but then there is a whole array of bulls**t to do afterwards. Digg, Tweet, delicious, Facebook, LinkedIn, blah, blah, blah each with it's own set of criteria to submit. (Some of this is automated, I know, but it is WAY too scattered. And, sometimes I don't want to post to my Facebook profile or posterous or tumblr.) Keeping track of these details well is what makes some really good people really bad at social media. . . .We're all trying to improve the process, but talk too much, create too much and listen too little.”

    Indeed.

  • http://smobot.com smobot

    Just thought I'd shorten your average comment length. There.

  • http://www.netwitsthinktank.com frank barry

    This makes me think about “listening” on the web. You've talked about that concept quite a bit on your blog.

    The argument for business folks to understad “listening” on the real time web seems to be growing and growing monthly. The tools are still in their infancey, but organizations need to pay attention to what's going on and learn to “listen” online because the future of the web is fractured and muddy. I'm not sure there is a way around that. This is both the beauty and the curse.

    http://twitter.com/franswaa

  • deborahrichmond

    The one thing that bothered me about Seth Godin's Brands in Public is the fact that Brands aggregates the information about companies and sticks it out there. Seth advocates that company's need to manage their reputation. He has been saying, “Look, if you don't manage your brand, people will write about you and you won't even know it.” But since he Brands now puts it all in one place, it's as though he's saying, “Look, in case what I said wasn't enough to get you to hire a reputation manager, here is your dirty laundry and I've stacked it into a pile for all to see in one place. Now pay us to manage it.” That's what is unsettling. Yes all the information was out there already, this is just a bit aggressive. It makes me begin to question whether Seth is an interpreter of the culture, or trying to push the culture to fit his predictions.

  • Pingback: This Week in Aggregation | The Wings of Wax Project

  • http://www.wordstream.com/blog Elisa

    “Seth just organized a bunch of information that was out there, and gave brands the opportunity to buy into his effort.” When he first announced it, it was opt-out, not opt-in. At least for some large companies. That was the source of the “fuss.”

  • http://www.zoombits.co.uk/christmas-gifts xmas presents

    I love the concept.While many hands may make light work, many hands connected to many brains connected to many egos and disconnected to many ears makes for a very fractured muddy Web. We’re all trying to improve the process, but talk too much, create too much and listen too little.

  • http://www.zoombits.co.uk/christmas-gifts xmas presents

    I love the concept.While many hands may make light work, many hands connected to many brains connected to many egos and disconnected to many ears makes for a very fractured muddy Web. We’re all trying to improve the process, but talk too much, create too much and listen too little.

  • Pingback: This Week In Aggregation | iRountree

  • geschenkefrmnner

    Hi,
    Very very informative post.I took time to understand but was so useful.The concept “change once, reflect everywhere” is appreciable.The change leadership concept assumes that successful ideas already exist in the organisation, but that replicating these ideas alone will not be sufficient. Instead of forcing the organisation to accept one given solution, the program identifies ideas which can be replicated within each particular organisational unit, utilising the principles of positive deviance for managing change. Unlike benchmarking, positive deviance does not focus on solutions but on identifying underlying successful behaviours inside the organisation.
    buy r4 dsi

  • http://www.memorybits.co.uk/ usb flash drive

    I have a friend who uses Facebook is completely Internet. There is a possible Google search in there every once in a while to be tossed, but he is generally comfortable with what he will. They know that Internet standards themselves do not wish to correspond with the type of challenge represents. It does not help that there are people so busy creating shortcuts when it is required. These shortcuts are now becoming the norm and that it down to the technical people are dumb. Totally awesome!