Changing Nature of Content

The nature of content online needs to shift to match with the changing nature of the overall Web.

Steve Rubel wrote today that the future is web services, not web sites. This gels with what many people have been saying for a while now. Mitch Joel, in particular, has talked about widgets a lot. While they didn’t take off in 2007 as some people expected, the signs are good now:

  • The infamously-closed Facebook is allowing its applications to live outside the site
  • Many popular tools make great use of third-party applications
  • Site after site is opening up its infrastructure to allow developers to build applications on it

What does this mean for us on the other side – the non-developers, the people who develop the content on sites?

To me, it means we need to start to think about how we need to change what we’re producing.

This is beyond simple RSS-enabled pages. We may need to start organizing content in small, shareable chunks.

Think of Utterz, for example. Content created through Utterz fits that description perfectly.

Will all content be as small and manageable as this? No. Still, its something we need to bear in mind.

Maybe this links in with the semantic web and we’ll need to tag our content carefully. Maybe we need to start creating content differently. Maybe it’s something else. I’m not sure.

What do you think?

Dave Fleet
Managing Director and Head of Global Digital Crisis at Edelman. Husband and dad of two. Cycling nut; bookworm; videogamer; Britnadian. Opinions are mine, not my employer's.