BestBuy hands out an API for shopping -
and that could have big ramifications for shopping & social
networks. This might be the first wave of an increased social,
semantic web.
Plaxo is big. It seems that I've seen Joseph Smarr (chief smarty-pants
at Plaxo) everywhere in the last year. Watching an interesting
video (link below) where a few announcements were mentioned:
- Y! OS - Yahoo! trying
to be more open ("Yahoo! Open
Strategy). Interesting, but techie.
- BestBuy launches giftag -
a way to get more shopping & gift information shared across
websites.
Technically, it's "microformats" and it's about computer having
more semantic understanding of content.
But what does it mean?
Developers have proved that they will create interesting &
useful on APIs
1. So having APIs & methods that let them do that, makes a
difference in what applications that people see and can use.
If we continue down this path of having more data available to
developers to do more things with (Facebook? LinkedIn? C'Mon!) -
eventually there will be enough data and applications to "tip" and
this stuff will start happening for real. And the cross-platform
social web will happen.
What kinds of things might be possible?
- If you are shopping on BestBuy.com: you can see which of your
friends are shopping (if they want to show that information) and
what they are looking for: so you can "browse" together.
- If you send an email in Yahoo! Mail inviting a friend to an
all-night cow-tipping party - they can see that email in Facebook
and create an event inside Facebook and share it with others.
- If you add something to your wishlist in Amazon.com (that's
where I keep my gift lists) and your birthday is coming up, I can
see that new gift while shopping BestBuy.com, also see my bank
balance (to see that I have enough money) and also see the recent
Flickr pictures from when we went on that jungle survival trip for
3 weeks - reminding me how I do owe you for saving my life and I
realize that spending $15 on that USB drive
shaped like Cabbage that you want is really a cheap repayment
of that life debt.
I've been watching XFN &
DataPortability & Microformats (all the
technology that makes these interesting things possible) for
awhile, wondering when it'll start to land. I think that the
infrastructure is starting to come. If it continues and, as
developers & non-tech businesses jump on board, we'll start to
see the fruits of it.
Interesting Video on Y!OS, Bestbuy
http://www.thesocialweb.tv/blog/2008/09/episode-10-yaho.html
BTW, how did these guys get the soundtrack from Ocean's 13? Nice
touch.
Notes
- It means that the tools for developers
are bigger and better. Why does Twitter matter at all? Its API
let's people build things. Part of why Flickr is the photo
sharing site is its API. A big part of Delicious (these last 2 are
both owned by Yahoo! now, maybe it's their moment in the sun?).
Google Maps? It's API & linking allows it to be used on many
websites.