The Come to Me Web

Yesterday evening I attended a presentation by Thomas Vander Wal, who invented the term folksonomy, on the "Come to Me Web" at the DC Future Salon in Bethesda, MD.

The "Come to Me Web" contrasts with the "I Go Get Web", which is how Thomas characterizes the first stage of the World Wide Web. Using the "I Go Get" metaphor, the user, connected to one device (computer), navigates to information s/he is seeking, and may add it to their "personal info cloud" on their one device.

The "Come to Me Web" characterizes a person with several networked devices (computer, music player, auto, mobile phone and/or pda, etc.) who needs access to their "personal and local information clouds" during their daily activities.

Thomas gave us an enlightening example of this: a knowledge worker who prepares a presentation on their work computer, leaves the office after transferring it to a mobile device, which they read on the subway ride home. At home they sync calendar and address book information, along with the presentation and emails from their work computer to their home computer and their portable, with which they plan to make the presentation. But the portable breaks, so they forward the presentation to their contacts at the location of the presentation, since their addresses had been synced earlier.

There were a few more steps in the example, but I hope you get the idea. We create several clouds of information around us that Thomas calls personal, local, global and external information clouds. We have greater and lesser access to the various clouds. We are now on the brink of the revolution he calls the "Come to Me Web", where we will be able to access greater amounts of "our" information wherever and whenever we need it, on whatever device we are using at the moment, through use of trusted-device syncing, rich media formats.

Thomas' message to web and software developers is to begin to think about the information needs of a person as they move through their days, including their contexts, and moving forward to what they will want to do with the information once they have it. For instance, if using a local search engine on a mobile device to find a nearby Thai restaurant, it will be most effective if the engine can determine your device, its location (through GPS if on a mobile device, for instance) and give you designed-for-mobile data that is relevant to your current location. We are moving towards a web that serves you the information you need depending on your location, device, your stored preferences, etc.

The title says it all, don't you think?