I hear alot of noise about "Real Estate 2.0", but I don't see any significant progress concerning the infrastructure necessary to participate in the Web 2.0 world as a web service.
If we can assume that Real Estate 2.0 is an extension of Web 2.0, and if we can agree that this video exemplifies the complete mix of business and technical requirements on the path to become a "Web 2.0" business, why aren't we seeing more discussions and progress along the XML infrastructure axis?
One explanation that we don't see the progress could be that when properly implemented, you'll never know when an application is truly XML compliant. This is plausible, but I have to ask -
- Is your website designed in a way that anyone can integrate your content into other use cases without asking you to write code?
- Is your content designed in a way that would allow it to be easily moved to another domain without making any changes to the content itself?
- With each new web site feature you add, do you build agility into it in a way that eliminates future code rewrites?
- If a social networking platform asked you for a list of your employees in FOAF format, would you be able to provide it?
- If a tagging/indexing service provided immediate integration of all your blog tags through XML, could you provide that?
These are just a few of the questions that are best resolved with an XML infrastructure. Another requirement of Web 2.0 is social data agility through XML protocols such as FOAF and microformats. Most indexing services are starting to require content in XML format - Trulia and GoogleBase come to mind. Are your sites prepared to expose content in these formats?
I have a hunch that we're all talking a good RE2.0 game and mimicking web 2.0 services, but few of us are actually building out our web applications with true Web 2.0 compliance in mind. I think that companies that actually undertake the task of building truly XML-based services will achieve a competitive advantage.
What do you think? I'd love to see examples where you've created XML agility in your online content services.
