Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Web Communication

Technology is there to enable people to do things. So, if you want to write a successful application, it's worth asking what things people like to do! And there's one answer that has proved itself time and time again - people like to communicate.

The killer apps of the internet have always been communication tools - starting with email, moving to webmail, instant messaging, blogging, Twitter streaming, and most recently social networking.

So how far has the web come in enabling communications? I put chart together to work this out.

Communication types
Timing View Add Method
Asynchronous Private Private Notebook
Asynchronous Private Public Email / Voicemail
Asynchronous Public Private Blog
Asynchronous Public Public Wiki
Realtime Private Private Dictaphone, CCTV
Realtime Private Public Instant Message
Realtime Public Private Twitter / TV / Radio / Webcam
Realtime Public Public Phone / video conference

The most obvious thing to note is that every cell in the table has something in it, so there are no obvious gaps - but many are filled with very recent technology, and it's still changing very quickly.

Secondly, the table drives home just how important and useful the Atom Publishing Protocol is - starting from blogging, it is spreading to all the asynchronous types of communication. That shows some foresight from Google, who have based their architecture around the standard.

Thirdly, realtime communications technology seems less mature. That's not a surprise - HTTP was designed for the asynchronous request / response pattern. So it will be interesting to see how this piece develops.

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