Echo, Synaptics and the Real-time Web

May 18, 2010 at 4:45 pm, Category: General Computing, Reviews, Web Development, by Mike

We recently introduced Echo into our blog as part of our ongoing effort to further engage with our customers through our updated website and through Social Media.

Reading around the product introduced me to some very interesting reading on the convergence of web technologies and applications to create what has been dubbed the Synaptic Web. What follows is my interpretation of this reading (right or wrong!) and what it may mean for web developers.

Synaptic Web

Since its inception the web has evolved at a speed greater than any of its early adopters could have imagined. With every new broadband development and application launch comes new possibilities for internet professionals to harness, exploit and engage; the Internet has moved from a simple data delivery platform to an interactive, dynamic and ever growing communication hub, encompassing and mirroring every part of real life. The growth has been so rapid, that as soon as a phrase is coined for the web’s current state, it has already moved on, with new possibilities and challenges for those that work within it.

The most obvious (though possibly not the most significant) change to this landscape in recent years has been the birth and mass adoption of social media. Social Media turned, and continues to turn the Internet upside down. It has shifted the emphasis away from pre-conceived messages funneled to the user through one way links and purposefully designed pages, to user generated content and discussion taking place outside of the established status quo and beyond the control of any single person.

It’s not just the source of content that has changed, but the way we interact, engage and share content. Links between pages used to be the backbone of the Internet, and yet are now just a base ingredient in a recipe of mass interaction and communication. In short, the web is getting smart and almost organic in its development, with large scale activity streams happening in real-time all over the Internet (summed up as Real-time Web or RTW).

Eric Blantz, Chris Saad and Khris Loux (CEO of Echo) use the metaphor of the human brain to explain this effect in their articleThe Synaptic Web:

The exploding variety, speed and flexibility of electronic connections – those between people, data sets, applications, the real world and the online world, gestures and meaning and content and communication – is at the root of what some have called an evolving “collective intelligence.” Thus, the Synaptic Web is about the evolution of the Internet from document delivery platform, to a platform for communication (“2.0″) and now towards something much more profound: a dynamic web of adaptive “organic” and implicit connections whereby real-time information flows give structure and meaning to previously unconnected sets of data. The Internet is a sea of conversations streaming through connections, and these patterns have meaning.

To define what exactly the Synaptic Web means is difficult and because so many have defined it better than I can, I thought I would quote! Dominiek defines it on his blog Synaptify as:

In essence, the connected nodes (people and computers) are an emergent global organism. But very concretely, the word “Synaptic Web” captures all important properties: ubiquity, meaning and interconnectedness (social).

It is this relationship between ubiquity, meaning and interconnectedness that forms a basis for what I believe will be new generation of applications, search and social interactions- allowing for content to be delivered on something more than just keyword relevancy.

Echo – Next Generation Commenting

Echo is the first application I have seen which attempts to bring together various ’streams’ of conversation from multiple platforms and display them at source, essentially monitoring the Real-time Web and simplifying the presentation of conversation.

With this only being the second day of us using it, it is a little early to say whether it adds anything to the user experience of our websites, or whether it will help stimulate conversation. What I can say is that it is nice to have an application which attempts to combine existing platforms and technologies to give the user a wider view of the online ‘buzz’ and bring together a breadth of conversation – something which will almost certainly be present in new social applications.

This is an arena I will be keeping an eye on and I believe we will be seeing many more developments under the banner of the Synaptic Web in the near future.

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Echo – Next Generation Commenting
Synaptify
Synaptic Web