Information Snacking in the real world

March 3, 2007 1 Comment

I’ve been talking and posting about my concept of “Information Snacking” for some time now; this is where the user is finally at the center of their data consumption, instead of trapped in an application or a specific device. We want to call up our data whenever, wherever we want it. I called this out explicitly in “The next thing: Minis, Flakes, et. al” some time ago.

The battle is continuing: whatever you call them; widgets, gadgets, blocks, panels, slabs, stickies or foos, a user’s data will be exposed in a manner that it can be hosted on their start page, and viewed on their PC, phone or other device.

The user is elbowing their way to the center, and the site(s) that facilitate this action with a framework will ‘win’ the next great set of eyeballs on the Web.

Some posts in the news:

From sound bites to bits and bytes, we’re all grabbing what we want, when we want it from the Web. We are choosing the timing and our venue to suit our needs and wants.

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The next thing: Mobiles, Minis, Flakes, et. al

November 10, 2006 2 Comments

I’ve been seeing this coming and talking about it internally for the past few months, driving my co-workers nuts. I have even posted about the concept a number of times.

Well, it’s here: the concept of a ‘universal landing page’ that users can own and add the content that suits them.

While I don’t have a name for the landing page myself (I’m sure there is one out there somewhere; ‘uber personalized site’ is so clumsy), I’ve been calling the consumption of these data “Information Snacking“.

Information Snacking is how users consume their data; whenever, wherever they please. It’s stock quotes on the run, email on a bus and alerts / notifications anytime. The convergence of broadband, content and devices makes this possible, and users will demand this, with a vengeance.

Among the other things they’ll demand:

  • Absolute control over the data they choose to snack upon.
  • Absolute control over the venue when they snack.
  • Freedom to grab content from a variety of sources.

While I’m not declaring the world of web portals dead, the landing page concept provides users the flexibility to select the data they want from a variety of competitive sources.

Here’s the concept. Imagine a single page that supports:

Let’s look at the list.

  • News and the latest bits from Slashdot are pretty obvious. But, if the user has Yahoo Finance, why the link to Schwab? Perhaps this user (okay, it’s me) has an account at Schwab and can get real-time quotes by passing credentials to the feed, instead of the standard 20-minute delay.
  • Same with email: why would the user need two email accounts on this page? First of all, convenience: avoiding the need to log in to separate web pages when, at a glance, they can see if they’ve mail. They’re one-click away from their inbox.

So, what’s wrong with the current portals? Nothing. I enjoy http://my.msn.com/ and http://my.yahoo.com/. However, I cannot do cross-pollination between the mail services at present, or add MSNBC to Yahoo, and so on (and so on, and so on).

“What a great idea!”, you might say. “Why isn’t anyone doing this?”, you might ask. Well, there are a few sites out there that provided these types of landing pages, including services from the majors (and lots and lots of minors) are appearing every day. However, the smaller sites couldn’t make the numbers work, and one by many, disappeared. I can verify that PageFlakes is still up and running if you want to see the concept for yourself.

You’ll see that each of these offers a variety of ways to link to content that is acquired off the landing page. Users WILL create accounts on one (or more) of these sites, and customize to their hearts’ content. These sites will eventually be ‘smart’ enough to provide the rich personalization experience even on a mobile phone or the 10′ experience enjoyed by Windows Media Center.

Speaking of mobile .. it’s quite possible that mobile devices are torpedoing these pages on the web. The mobile device is, by it’s very nature, an Information Snacking device .. a composite application, with you as the center.

Pick your landing page or your device, connect your data and snack away!

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The User at the Center

March 29, 2006 1 Comment

It’s all about the user. I addressed this earlier in “What do you call the uber personalized site for information snacking?” and I’m starting to see more and more in the ‘sphere about what is getting to be a monumental shift.

I’m still thinking about this and am looking for partners interested in working on it with me.

The user wants to snack on their data; whenever, wherever they are. This could be email on the PC or SmartPhone, video on the phone while on a plane or on the big screen while at home, a Personal Control Panel that aggregates all the user’s desired content with access from anywhere (think MyMSN or My Yahoo).

This PCP could include digital content that’s best presented in a 10-foot view, accessible with Windows Media Center and your wide-screen TV. Or it could include links to your music, downloadable to your PC or phone from your place on the web.

It’s bigger than a portal; it’s our user’s life. The user at the center is the main tenet of Information Snacking.

What do you think?

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What do you call the uber personalized site for information snacking?

February 27, 2006 2 Comments

What’s in a name?

I’m torn on this.

For quite a while, I’ve been touting the next generation of the web as a completely personalized experience where users could ‘snack’ on their own information, when they wanted, where they wanted. I still believe this is true, and I’ve called it “Information Snacking”.

On the MIX06 blog, I posted “Services as a Platform”, where I describe ‘information snacking’ as what users do when they access their data on a customized site. I also describe the ‘new’ generation of the ‘whole product’ paradigm in “Extend Your Reach”; where a whole product includes several form factors, providing the medium for users to access their aggregated data.

Om Malik had a guest column by Robert Young in 2006 in a “Can MySpace be Beaten?” post, where he described the ‘console for consumer control’ (‘C3’) as the MySpace ‘beater’. In short, this is a customizable dashboard application that contains only the items the user is interested in, for them to ‘snack’ upon when the mood strikes them. Without the critical mass and network appeal of MySpace, is this really a ‘beater’?

The ‘sphere was quick to adopt ‘Web 2.0’, but has long eschewed ‘Information Snacking’. I keep talking about it, though, and I use MyMSN in that way. Their mobile experience isn’t as bad as some, but not as good as others. Still not a ‘complete product’, by my definition.

So, if not C3 or some MyVariant, what do YOU call the uber personalized site for information snacking? Where is this site?

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Web 2.0 is Dead; Long Live the Web!

December 20, 2005 Leave a comment

While presenting in my world-wide tour last month, I entered into a discussion with some very savvy people with strong opinions of “Web 2.0”. To further the discussion (and raise the level of emotion in the room), I proclaimed Web 2.0 to be “dead”, as it’s now achieved the level of hype “enjoyed” by SOA as little as 18 months ago. I made this point with the following anecdote:

You remember SOA? I sure do. I still believe in the underlying principles and methodologies that comprise and define a successful services orientation in an extended enterprise. Read that line carefully. SOA is not a noun (although you could refer to your enterprise as a services-oriented architecture-oriented enterprise). Services Orientation is a set of processes and methodologies that describe and manage the transfer and sharing of data between disparate, loosely-coupled entities. I referred to this at length in “Services Orientation – The Architecture Formerly Known As SOA – Introduction”.

So it is with Web 2.0. The mass media is now coming to realize that the phrase “Web 2.0” is a catch-all term, loosely used to describe the proliferation of social networking, user-shared content, aggregation and such. But behind it all is the need for improvement in how the end user accesses their data; the data that matters the most to them.

We snack on our information every day. This “Information Snacking” is part of our routine:

  • We rise, shave and shower.
  • We check email.
  • We check the web for traffic, bus schedules, kid’s school lunch menus.
  • We check our stock quotes.
  • .. and so on.

As users, we want the data we care about when we want it, regardless of where we are. We want it when we want it, and will accept “lesser” experiences (say, a WAP-enabled cell phone) when we’re in a position where that’s the only (or most convenient) way to snack on our data.

Web 2.0 is dead? I’m kidding myself. Media., marketers, technical sales people and developers will use the term because it’s the easiest way to describe the over-arching idea of the web’s evolution.

The term will be around for a long time. What it actually “means” will mutate at the whim of the market and critical mass of the user community. Those who will benefit need to identify how their applications might meet the needs of these whims.

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RSS and Information Snacking

June 25, 2005 Leave a comment

The web has taken note of RSS in a big way.

The standard is has been around since early 2001.  While there may be some confusion as to the meaning of the acronym (Rich Site Summary, Rich Document Format (RDF) Summary Stream, Really Simple Stream, and more), RSS syndicates and shares content.  I’m going with Really Simple Syndication.

RSS allows a user to select sites and topics that feature information that matters to them.  Rather than surfing through a number of sites and refreshing multiple times, the user uses an aggregator to subscribe to sites of interest.  The RSS aggregator pulls down the information at user-defined intervals.  The user goes to one application to “snack” on the news of their personal interest.

This Information Snacking increases both our personal productivity (less time spent chasing information) and the sheer volume of information we can consume.

There are a number of aggregators already on the market and the standard is a core technology in Microsoft Windows.

Original Post: June 25, 2005

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