Friday, August 12, 2005 11:26 AM
There are many, many commentators speculating as to the future of the world wide web. As I have mentioned previously, the commentary regarding the web moving to its next phase, "subscribe," is especially intriguing. If we look at the evolution of the web, which started with "browse," and then moved to "browse and search," is it really a leap to believe that "browse and search and
subscribe," is a plausible next step?
With the massive growth of the web and the information overload that we all face everyday in our jobs and personal life, "browse" as a means to interact with the web is less and less useful. Mainly because few people have the time or inclination to randomly bounce from website to website, hoping to find something of interest.
The weakness of browsing clearly led to the emergence of "search." Indeed, web portals highlighting search engines such as Yahoo!, Google and MSN have increasingly become the jumping off point for people interacting with the web. Rather than randomly browsing for your topic of interest, you search for it (note that the search may lead to some browsing, which is why search hasn't replaced browse, but rather complemented it).
However, the weakness of search is that once you find what you were looking for, you have few ways to capture the search for future use. The example I have discussed in the past is keeping up with your investments. I, for one, don't have the time each day to browse to a search engine and then type in a query for every stock and mutual fund I own or am researching, all in vain hope that maybe some new information or news item has been posted to the web.
Instead, I want this information to come to me in my place of choosing. And, I only want the information to come to me when it is fresh and new; not something I have already read. In other words, I want to "subscribe," to my search query.
Subscribing doesn't mean I will stop browsing and searching, but it may mean that my portal to the web is not a traditional website. Indeed, I consider my current portals to the web to be Outlook (via my Newsgator reader) and Gmail. Mainly, because I subscribe to most of the information that I need to check daily, whether it is Microsoft's knowledge base, Law.com or some stock I am researching [note: if you click this last link it will be raw XML/RSS -- to see my point, you need to subscribe to the link].
Much of the "subscribe" functionality outlined in the paragraphs above is still being fleshed out to make it more user-friendly and easy for the average person. I am likely more of a power user when it comes to subscribing, and clearly the majority of the world is not yet on board. Still, I am confident that subscribing to content will ultimately be as easy as sending an email. And, that is what makes the future web pretty interesting.
So, browse and search and subscribe and...stay tuned...