Enabling plasticity enhances the information ecosystem (paradigm shift #3)

In a recent past post, we explained that we had identified 5 paradigm shifts occuring in the Web today, through the prism of institutional communication. This was the outcome of a strategic consulting mission we run for the European Commission about the future and stakes of the Europa.eu portal.

The 5 paradigms are:

1. The landscape of visibility has evolved
2. Individuals act as human neurons
3. Enabling plasticity enhances the information ecosystem
4. Communication takes more than a web page
5. Time has become a key dimension of content dynamics

Today we’ll discuss about the first paradigm: Enabling plasticity enhances the information ecosystem.

Content providers used to think that they would communicate better by controlling every detail of their communication, website, etc. Recent history has shown to the contrary that by being open, by making data or information available in a format that lends itself to be recycled or manipulated, spreading of information is improved.

The boundaries of any information ecosystem go way beyond the website

The implied metaphors of the early web sites borrowed a lot from construction: a website was built, with an architecture (necessarily designed exclusively by the website owner, following a somewhat rigid map), etc.
 Websites are still conceived and built that way, but in a new visibility landscape imbued with sharing and spreading, they become increasingly isolated. New webistes that realize the power of openness and sharing, on the other hand, have flexible architectures, do not focus on their boundaries, and as a result see their content flow and grow.

Making a toolbox available unleashes external creativity

A strong trend is to make a toolbox available for developers. Three examples.

1. Twitter is probably the best example of this: its developers have designed it as a “bare bones” services, with a minimum of features, and an extensive API. After two years, Twitter is a vibrant ecosystem that has more than 10,000 applications or derived works. The Twitter.com accounts now for less than 50% of the tweets seen or sent by the application.
2. Paying attention to Microformats allows to deliver information in a way that facilitates reuse by external sites and applications.
3. Widgets are a compact, concise way to enable end-user to have access to tailored information distribution. Users can create and customize their own widgets that they can thereafter display on their websites and blogs.

Personalisation allows users to appropriate customised content

Without being developers, average users can use several tools to tailor content (coming from several sources) to their reading and sharing needs.

Next week: Communication takes more than a web page.