The Secret of 2.0

I've got a separate post coming specifically on Twitter and it's ilk, but there was a phrase in this O'reilly post that really hit me.

"What's different, of course, is that Twitter isn't just a protocol. It's also a database. And that's the old secret of Web 2.0, Data is the "Intel Inside". That means that they can let go of controlling the interface. The more other people build on Twitter, the better their position becomes."

I sort of knew this, but it took this phraseology for me to really get it.

Two things immediately came into my head: 1) I need to ditch tiddly wiki and get some database backed blogging platform (or write my own). 2) Our typical clientele fundamentally does not understand this.

I'm starting to wonder why our community doesn't take a more Google (or even Amazon) like approach to their data. Aggregate it, put out some APIs and see what people do with it. Concentrate on availability, access, and environment/platform and get out of the way. Things like the DIB and DDMS and the rest of the standardized, top-down approach are starting to seem really heavy handed to me.