@_evan : I was pretty disapointed with the show in it self, but I loved to see the planes through the building in downtown!

Interact with webservices and websites

When you want to interact with another user, Internet offers a wide range of solutions : from email to forums, passing through Blogs, I.M. (MSN, Skype or even Twitter) and even data sharing websites(FlickR, Youtube), and many other products or innovations ar in the pipes of many start-ups (Seesmic = Forum + Video, Disqus = Forum + Blogs …). However, when it comes to interaction between a webservice and a user, the landscape is a lot less rich!

Actually, 90% of communication between a user and a website/webservice is done through the site itself : if you want to know your checking account balance, you need to go on http://www.mybank.com; if you want to know what are the articles that were published on l’Ouvre-Boite, well, you need to connect to this blog… etc. When I say 90%, one may ask what are the other 10%? Emails, and to some extent RSS feeds. On this blog, you don’t actually need to come here to see what’s been published : you can receive the new article by email, or through your RSS reader. Twitter goes even further : you can use the service by SMS or IM only! But let’s face it : email notification is just provided by some services, RSS feeds remain very abstract for “the masses” and, besides Twitter, which “big” service provides SMS interaction?

My vision is that improvment of interaction between users and webservices is one of the “next big things” th : sooner or later, I will be able to communicate via skype with Expedia.com when I want to buy a plane ticket. I am also certain that this revolution will not come from the services themselves, but from a tier (my next venture ;p) that will be able to bring communication to any service to any user. Finally, I think that the first step is notification, and that’s exactly what my new venture will start doing!
What do you think?

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Viewing 7 Comments

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    i guess i don't really follow you here, interaction between users and webservices... i can see how a user would want to interact with a webservice, but i don't see the point for the webservice to interact directly with the user.
    besides, i don't see anything wrong with the way things currently work with buying plane ticket, checking account balance.
    or well, maybe i'm not seeing as far as you ;)
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    Hi Ecolo...

    Well, interaction is "both ways", for the user to interact with the service, the service should be able to communicate with the user.

    There is nothing wrong with online banking through the web, or your way of buying plane tickets... but my feeling is that it's not enough and not always convenient for every user.

    Wouldn't be great to have google results for a given keyword by SMS?
    Example : "10 results for "Chinese Restaurant in San Franscico" from Google" and you get them by SMS?
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    mmhh, i don't know if that's a good example. well i guess for one thing, it would depend what kind of device we are talking about, if it's just a cell phone, then i would find it awkward to get such information, if it's on an iphone/blackberry then i have access to google which i could just use as is, so i think your example doesn't really reflect your *idea*.

    about your idea of "notifications" though, it reminds me of something i've heard a while back. i think it was in hong-kong where cell phone users could subscribe to a service, and as they walk around, they could get notified by some businesses/stores about special sales or what not. But then again, in this case, it's a one way interaction, service to user.
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    Basially, it's any device... your mobile phone, is just a starting example... I will also concentrate myself on IM. As a example, did you know that you don't actually need to go on twitter.com to use it? I almost never go, because I use it only in Skype.
    For my bank, it's just incredibly long and painful to get your balance on the website. My idea/feeling is that it's just easier to get it from IM/SMS with a single phrase : "what is the balance of account 912345k?"

    Notification also works for the kind of information you want to have (not just ads!). As an example, you may want to be notified when you're bank account balance is below 100$, or when I published something on l'OuvreBoite (like a a reply to your comment!).
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    ok, now i understand your idea. you are true it'd be nice to get notification for say when things get delivered to your house.
    good luck with your venture!
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    Ah, starting to see where you're going with your next thingamajig. I guess I'll have to wait until I actually see it to fully understand the range of applications though. Quick question en passant: if your service is essentially transparent to the user, doesn't it make it more vulnerable to competition -- and if so, do you mitigate this via deals of exclusivity with end service providers or something? just curious, I'll understand if you'd rather not say here & now. In any case, I wish you the best of luck!

    oh and thanks for your acct # :p
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    @Ecolo : good to see that you understood... Actually, explaining is extremely useful in the process of understanding what's important and what's not!

    @Bruno : hopefully, you won't have to wait for long! It's gonna be transparent, but still, since I am notifying them, I'll make sure that it's my service that notifies, not the actual source they want to follow... so as they don't foget us!

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