Spurl > Del.icio.us? OR Spurl <> Del.icio.us? Web Services Built on Top of One Another. The first Important Web Services for Events Have Been Born!

Spent some time with some huge Del.icio.us fans this week. I haven't met a lot of del.icio.us fans in person, so it was cool to get f2f impressions of it. I knew all of these people used del.icio.us. But, it was interesting to see how hooked and passionate they were about it.

Since most of the people I am referring to have always (or are now) reading my blog, I am giving another shout-out to Spurl.

What is Spurl's coolest feature? What is it about spurl that all of you del.icio.us lovers will love? 

When you post to spurl, It posts to del.icio.us.

I switched to spurl because I have the inside knowledge that Hjalmar Gislason, the founder of spurl, is up to some cool shiznit. And since switching to spurl meant that I could continue to use del.icio.us and benefit from cool new features that del.icio.us launches, I did it.

So, check out spurl. Complementary Commercial over.

Brainstorming beginning:

I also think that this is an extremely interesting development in the nature of online application development and business competition. Spurl and del.icio.us technically accomplish a very similar thing. This would - to any normal B-school business person - mean that they are competitive enterprises.

So, why would one of these companies (del.icio.us) make it easy for the other to switch to a competitor (spurl)?  Why would the other (spurl) make it easy to keep using its competitor (del.icio.us)?  Further, who would have thought that a form with 4 fields would revolutionize the way many of us store, retrieve and organize information?

That's right. In a wonderful world full of web based services with APIs, almost anything is possible.  Things can get remixed, shuffled and new species born. Things can get built on top of other things getting support from already existing superstructures.

To make some further analogy to nature, it is almost like a forest where evolution occurrs at a rapid pace: where forests from pre-human times are evolving to modern day forests in a span of time that a generation of humans exists. We are watching and causing digital evolution faster than anything has ever evolved. We are creating a living breathing internet where each of us has the power to create a new organism that leverages the ecosystem that already exists. Time becomes irrelevant. As soon as a new web service reaches a critical value, it can spawn 1000s more web services.  If that's true, then the name of the game is creativity and innovation. Not competition. And thus the reason for interoperability between social bookmarking systems.

So, what would you build on top of something else?  Architecting a new website used to mean starting with the presentation layer, specifying the business logic, designing the database.  Application architects must now consider what API they can leverage to help them architect any piece of that: from GUI to data layer to commerce server.  If you're a net based company and you aren't thinking this way, then move over. Prepare to be out innovated. The next generation of archaelogists will have trouble finding your fossils.

As this relates to my company, it is very appropriate to this post, that EVDB has just launched their API. Not only are they letting people add and subtract events. They are doing the same for venues. Of course, Andy Baio at Upcoming.org also launched an API like this a little while ago. We've yet to explore them.

Probably the most appropriate piece of all of this for us is the venue APIs. It is a hassle to force users to enter new venues. And it is a pain in the arse to detect and remove duplicates. Managing a venue database is something I'd much rather let someone else do.

Further, what upcoming.org and EVDB are doing is very similar, but they are accomplishing it in different ways. In a world where SEARCH IS KING (the status of the ecosystem that we are currently living in), many smart people think that the aggregation of events is the holy grail of web services for events.  Once you have the events together, people will come to you to find out about events. You'll own the highway. The data store. The API that everyone wants to build on top of. You'll become the telephone poles for event information. I don't think it is that simple. Events and consumer's intention to 'buy them' will not be easily captured by providing unlimited choices. The company that figures out events online (and no-one has done it yet - but a few people are working on it) won't be simply aggregating and 'providing search' based on date, time, location and who's going.

'I am smarter' rant over.
New 'I am smarter' rant beginning:

Nevertheless, EVDB and Upcoming.org are building the dirt road. The highways of people driving to events may be built on top of that. But, what is interesting to me is that they are building the dirt road in different ways. Upcoming.org - having first mover advantage - is building the dirt road with a bunch of volunteers. They have 1000s of people adding events and venues to their database. EVDB is building the dirt road with help from some very big bulldozers (ie web 1.0 event companies) by aggregating their events into one big pile of events with a nice search interface and directory. Many of these web 1.0 event companies, to my surprise, seem glad to give their data as long as they get a link back.

Lastly...

So kudos, to Andy, Brian, Josh and Hjalmar for planting the seeds of this new forest. I can't wait to see what will take root from here.

Comments

[Noah Brier]

Interesting post Pete. Also, you've sold me enough that I've clicked through and will take a look at Spurl.