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Standards and Web 2.0 - On a collision course?

Interesting post from Tim Hand got me to thinking about this one. From Tim's perspective, the standards arena seems to have stalled a bit (if I'm reading correctly). When compared to what's happening in Web 2.0 with new services and technologies just powering ahead. Try to keep up with what's happening in the world of mashups alone and it's staggering. There is interoperability (of a kind) everywhere. Developers are connecting up all sorts of apps, data sources etc to deliver new, innovative services. In doing this they are not dependent on cumbersome, complex standards. We recently did some research on standards in the area of ePortfolios and one of the major findings from that was the impact that Web 2.0 was having in that area. It was hard to find ePortfolio implementations (other than vendor software) that were using standards such as IMS ePortfolio but many of the implementers were interested in using RSS and other lightweight specifications in their implementations. They could easily consume content from other sources and also publish/syndicate their content very easily. Simple specs and simple services enable them to include functions from other sites into their ePortfolios (eg using Flickr to hold images of your work). Students also saw services such as myspace and Facebook as better places for them to have their ePortfolio (there were some interesting variations on this though). So what does this mean for the formal world of standards and specifications. The very nature of the standards process is a slow one. A great deal of work goes into the development of a standard/specification which involves development work, collaboration, reviews, (public) comment, ratification and so on, all of which takes time. Time unfortunately is not 'Standards' best friend in the frenetic, fast pace of the Web 2.0 world. As the rate of change increases in both speed and sheer number of new services, it seems to me that the slow paced standards process faces a real challenge to keep up.

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