The Web 2.0 Summit kicks off next week here in San Francisco. Epicenter's Julie Sloane and I will be there, blogging and passing out cards (and just plain passing out).
The official theme this year is "The Web's Edge," whatever that means. But based on murmurings I've read recently, I'd like to propose a less official theme: "The Socialization of Presence."
I got to thinking about this after reading Chris Messina's thought-provoking blog post riffing on Google's acquisition of the social messaging service Jaiku. If you're not familiar with the news, see our coverage on Compiler.
Chris' post refers to a meme started earlier this year by Web 2.0 conference co-chair Tim O'Reilly called the "Web 2.0 Address Book," a nebulous product (yet to be invented) that's basically a location-aware contact list. The idea is that all of our real social apps already exist in the form of e-mail, your phone, IM and Twitter. We just need some glue to make everything work together.
Messina extends the idea to a possible scenario: Rather than calling somebody or sending an e-mail or a Twitter or an IM, you just open up your contact list and click on their name. Wherever they are, your communication reaches them via the most convenient and appropriate means. So, they're walking on the beach, their iPhone rings. If they're in a meeting, they get a text message. If they're at their desk, they get an e-mail. If they're in Asia, they're probably asleep, so they get a voicemail.
Another name for it is the "presence-enabled phone book."
Last month, Jaiku's Jyri Engeström argued that this location-aware utility is the key piece of functionality missing from the iPhone. Not a surprising point of view considering it's pretty close to where his company is headed. Jyri points to O'Reilly's post which makes the same point.
Messina, however, argues on the iPhone's behalf. He asserts that Apple's browser-centered "dumb device" is the perfect tool with which to surf the social presence web. He brands the iPhone the Sputnik of this new frontier, the first of many devices to come. Logically then, since Google bought Jaiku and since the company is rumored to be building its own mobile platform, this is one of the holes we can expect the so-called GPhone to fill.
And for anyone weary of joining yet another social networking platform in order to participate, worry not. You're already a member. This new presence-aware social network is the web.
In Messina's vision of the future, your "presence" doesn't just exist on Facebook or Google. Rather, it lives in that layer of information which can be assembled from the pieces stored on every service you're a part of. Obviously, microformats would play a key part in such a scenario. Standards like hCard and hCalendar can be used to track where you are and what you're up to. OpenID can verify your identity, making your location data accessible to you and your group of friends. Instantly, anyone who wanted to get in touch with you could just look you up in their contact list and see where you are, what you're doing, what you'll be doing this afternoon and the best way to get in touch with you right now.
Actually, I should amend that last sentence -- anyone you trust would be able to get in touch with you. That's one of the complicated caveats here, and one that Messina touches on in his post. In order for this presence network to properly blossom, we need to overcome the hurdle of privacy. Not only do we need more secure and innovative ways of safely establishing and maintaining our identities, but we all need to get more comfortable with putting our information out there in the first place.
More importantly, we also need to free up all of our personal data that's already out there, languishing in closed networks like Facebook. Sadly, that might prove to be the most difficult hurdle.
Photo: Heyjules via Flickr
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