What is a standard? How do we evolve the standards? How do you disseminate the standards (top down or ?) ?
RSS was an open standard that we all embraced & nobody owns it. And people make a lot of money from RSS.
We want to embrace other open standards in the same way. Create new standards.
What should be standardized? What not? What can be company specific/proprietary. For example, what part of a Calendar is the same, and what can be unique? Vendors need unique features over and above the open standards in order to differentiate. Have their own value-add.
At what point is it appropriate to draw the line?
If vendors cannot have proprietary features then the unique things they do have, their value add, are simply re-integrated back into the open standard and they have nothing left to sell you or provide you value with.
On the flip side, when do features become irrelevant? When they are added for the monetary value but provide nothing to the user, or even detract from it.
What do you when we encounter ‘closed’? ex. When Myspace tells people no YouTube and we own your data.
Myspace does not own those users or their data. The social capital those people invest in their friendships is theirs only. If they want to take those relationships somewhere else (Tribe, etc) they should be able to. To export it and go.
Being open is a two-way street. You must commit to import & export, for example, with your APIs.
What is the new publishing model?
It’s not about publishing content any more, it’s about providing an experience. A Digital Lifestyle Aggregator / portal or whatever. Amazon.com is a portal – Buy.com still operates on the publishing model.
The point now is to build a user experience around the open standards. The end of the day, marketing is this user experience. The base product is not the "sell" itself. Basic marketing teaches us that what we need to do is fill a void. A toaster is a piece of technology, but it solves a need to make your bread into toast and satisfy your hunger in a way more meaningful than if it were untoasted. It’s the end product -> product + user experience = value
Quote:
"It is the open standards that are the bridges and causeways that interconnect the small isolated islands [of startups] together."
Companies are going IPO now with very few unique features on these standards. So it’s not about being completely unique anymore. It’s about embracing standards and adding some value on top – a little or a lot, it doesn’t take much anymore.
Open standards allow for competition and for growth. If there are no open standards, the only ‘out’ or ‘growth’ for a small company is to be bought out and funded. Open standards allow for small companies to thrive on their own.
Tags: marc canter, open standards, gnomedex, gnomedex 6.0, gnomedexcommentary
