We'll start this exploration of the Do.Me by going back to the beginning of the web and addressing the most fundamental Internet myth... That the Internet was a great leap forward for computing and information technology.

Actually the birth of the Internet represented quite the opposite. It took computing back at least 15 years. Maybe more.

I say that because if you owned a Windows or an Apple computer back in 1995 you probably had loaded on your computer a number of very complex applications. If you were a graphic or multimedia designer you would have had applications like Illustrator, Photoshop, Macromind Director or Authorware (i.e. Flash), Pagemaker. If you were an Architect you would have had AutoCAD. An Accountant would have had Excel and Word. A statistician Mathematica, A filmmaker Premier or one of the other EDL edit compositors... the list of applications is as varied as the professions that invested in these personal computers.

These application had been evolving since at least the mid-1980's and so they had accumulated lots of functionality. Each new release would have included new features and tools and file types to encourage the users to upgrade. It was a thriving ecosystem.

Now along comes the Internet and the surrogate operating system we call the web browser.

Rather than offer a whole range of complex functionality it does one thing. It reads a text file that utilises the HTML mark-up language and something called the Hyperlink to display text on screen and navigate to linked pages.

This revolution of the mind took computing functionality back to at least the 1980's. Simply because the mark-up language was the same markup language secretaries and typists used to create documents in WordStar.

The world in effect traded complex functionality for ease of navigation between text documents.

If we look at the functionality of social media platforms like Blogger and Wordpress we could make the case for their functionality being on a par with the very early versions of Word that shipped with Windows 3 or the original Apple Macintosh. With the advent of HTML5 these web services will graduate to the functionality of the early versions of page layout tools like Quark Express and Pagemaker. Again we are talking late 1980's and early 1990's in terms of direct comparison of functionality.

This would suggest that the rate of innovation and the evolution of functionality on the web has been comparatively slow by desktop standards (i.e. The early days of the Apple Mac and Windows). This is perhaps why the growth of the various Mobile Apps Stores have proven such a revelation to this current generation of entrepreneurs, VCs and developers.

The limits to growth on the web has always been the browser. The simple fact is in the beginning the browser was just a simple text reader and yet we always expected so much more from it.

Indeed most of the investment in innovation to date has been in trying to discover work arounds and plugins that allow developers to expand the limited functionality of the browser to deliver a compelling user experience (e.g. Flash, XML).

OK Fast forward to today and we see an innovation landscape based on bringing very small ideas to market. VC's and the tech community get very excited about small ideas (e.g. Photo sharing and 140 Character messaging). Essentially small ideas that in the old world of the 1990's era desktop app may have rated as a new feature, advantage or a benefit on the next release of Word, PhotoShop. PowerPoint or Excel. So the question is why have these "Function Points" become so revolutionary and important within the context of the web?

The answer is if you think of "the Web as the Application" rather than just the distribution network for media and messages then owning a single function point used by a Billion users around the globe has as much value today as owning the whole desktop application suite back in the late 1980's to early 1990's... maybe much more so given the general confusion that now exists between the value of customers and traffic

So, basically at best having stood still and at worst gone backwards for the past 15-20 years, it would appear that as the web comes of age as an application development platform the information technology industry is on the verge of the next real wave of innovation or what I call the Do.Me.

Now the Do.Me is the very simple idea that the web is awash with function points (i.e. nodes of activity) and these function points will continue to grow exponentially. So the real challenge is to discover ways of making it easy for everyday users to create, curate and consume functions and applications in the same way that they create, curate and consume messages and media, connections and relationships.

So just as the old Web Portals became obsolete once Google discovered you can make more money out of being a sign post than a destination. So too will the SaaS, PaaS and the cloud vendors become obsolete once somebody figures out the same trick for function points.

So, as I said yesterday, in very simple terms Google solved the Information Graph mapping and message discovery problem by turning the network into the database and allowing everybody else to solve the problem of identifying what was worth finding for them. Likewise Facebook has solved the Social Graph mapping and people discovery problem by turning our relationships into a database and allowing everybody else to solve the problem of identifying who is important for them.

I would suggest the next big opportunity is the Do.Me... and by that I mean allowing everybody else to solve the problem of mapping the Functional Graph by turning the network as an application and then identifying which function points are the best solution to any problem.

At its simplest level just imagine a Twitter or Google + for function points that allows you and your circle of contacts to create a Photoshop plugin, typeface or brush on demand. Or a Twitter that allows you and your circle to share datasets and graphing tools to create analysis constructs on demand.

A network awash with unlimited functionality, just as it is today awash with unlimited messages and connections. All you have to do is pull the bits (i.e. the Function Points) you need together, when you need them to create a solution or solve a problem, to create a new game or add new functionality or characters to an existing game.

Part 2.

Of course the other key new idea embedded in the The Roadmap from Metcalfe’s Law to the Crowdsong Innovation Paradox was that of the Crowdsong Innovation Paradox [CIP].

The CIP describes how these single activity based entities (e.g. Search, Messaging, Picture Sharing) grow very quickly via the network effect and then evolve into platforms as a range of additional activities are added to the core functionality to service the extraordinary growth in traffic.

There is nothing new about this trend. For example Search began as a single idea and quickly expanded into a portal (Think: Yahoo!) only to be disrupted by Google. A few years ago we saw Social begin as a single idea and quickly explode into a portal (Think: Facebook)... The question mark here of course is will it be disrupted by a new and more efficient type of Social Business Model based on the sign post rather than the destination model? Today we have Salesforce and the emergence of the cloud portals. Again the question is will these software portals be disrupted by a new and more efficient type of Business Model based on the sign post rather than the destination model?

In each case the extraordinary growth in traffic was achieved by a single core function. The "portal" activities followed the traffic rather than providing the catalyst. The underlying business strategy being to improve the overall level of stickiness by proving the traffic with more activities (i.e. reasons to stay) and in each case the resulting portal was disrupted by a new entrant that focused on improving the core function (again the primary example begin Yahoo!, Google and Search).

What is interesting about this portal activity. This perennial focus on turning the function point into a destination. Is it has a tendency to "cool", rather than stimulate innovation across the network. The traffic growth may be fuelled by search or it may be fuelled by photo sharing but once the traffic arrives you can expect to see the introduction of games, email, news feeds, messaging, photo sharing, search into the portal mix as the management team focuses its energy on turning the function point into a destination by introducing more activities to make it sticky.

This replication of functionality across the portals cools innovation across the web as developers focus on adding new features to service traffic rather than generating new function points that expand the overall capabilities of the web. This then is the subtext of the ongoing tension of the Web as a collection of platforms or destinations vs. the Web as an Application. Or, what we have come to understand as the Open vs. Closed Internet debate. Which model fuels innovation? The story is both do. The reality is closed systems tend to fuel replication rather than innovation. While open systems tend to fragment innovation towards single function point solutions.

A web of single function point solutions provides the global platform for the tiered evolution of innovation as new layers are added that sow together these functions points on as needs basis to create more complex applications. We see this at its most primative with things like the Mapping API's that allow you to create data visualisations using Google Maps. Another example that Antoine RJ Wright was kind enough to point out is ifttt.com - the online equivalent of a 1980's DOS batch file.

The Do.Me is about the next generation of developers who are clever enough to recognise like ifttt.com that the real opportunity of the endless mashup isn't in being the author of proprietary mashups but being the provider of the simple, easy to use interfaces and tools that allow everybody else to create their own mashups.

This is the Wordpress vs the New York Times story and the Facebook vs. the AOL story. Yesterday's Tools vs. Content debate becomes tomorrows Tools vs. Functionality debate.

Put simply yesterday's revolution was about providing everyone with the opportunity to become a best selling author (i.e. Blogger). Tomorrow will be about proving everybody with the opportunity to become a best selling developer... without having the hassle of learning how to code.

The So.Me (i.e. Blogging, MySpace and Facebook) provided everybody with a DIY WYSIWYG HTML editor that made the activity of creating web pages transparent to the act of creating content. Plus the tools to share in the discovery of this content (i.e. Twitter)

The Do.Me will provide everybody with a DIY WYSIWYG application authoring and development platform that makes the act of creating code and mashing together disparate function points into complex work flows transparent to the act of creating apps. Plus the tools to share in the discovery of there apps.

Search and the social unleashed the latent potential of the crowd to be the intelligent agents (i.e. Actors) within - what is for all intents and purposes - a "stupid network" to create what we consider today to be the most intelligent knowledge network mankind has ever invented. Surely the time is ripe for the world of software and application development to follow the same path?

Part 3.

Of course if we apply the principle of Occam's Razor to the ideas behind the Do.Me we soon discover that the chances of the "Network becoming the Application" are in all probability extremely low.

I say that because history shows us that 99.999% of all innovation on the web to date comprises of new ways of creating and displaying web pages and/or endless lists from a database.

Just take a look at the latest round of social innovations like Pinterest, Polyvore, Paper.li or even Mobile Apps like Flipboard. Yes, even Facebook started life as little more than a DIY web page generator. The lists, games and apps came later. While Google and Twitter are the "killer" list engines of our time.

As I have said before the web is basically an industry built around the building of digital nests and the creation of endless lists of likes.

You see the limits to innovation across the web are limited by the functionality of the web browser... and at the end of the day the browser was designed to do one thing. Display an HTML page.

So realistically the only way for the web to evolve beyond the obvious limitations of the browser as an application delivery platform is for the browser to become redundant.

The other barrier to the growth of the Do.Me is of course the developers and the established platform (i.e. Data Base) owners. It is difficult to see the IT industry being as foolish as the media industry when it comes relinquishing control over their IP in exchange for the unlimited potential of the Internet. After all it is far too easy for the industry to reset the benchmark on a regular basis by introducing new Operating Systems (Think Symbian/Windows/Android/iOS) or Programming Languages (Think .Net/C++/Java/Ruby/C#/the list goes on and on) with the launch of new generation of devices.

HTML survives not because it is efficient or clever programming environment but simply because it is the most primitive of languages that deals exclusively with the problems associated with the presentation, as opposed to the application, layer.

For the Do.Me to thrive it needs to be supported by an environment that can support not only a complex presentation layer but also a complex application layer (Think Apple's iOS and Google's Android).

This then is piece of the puzzle that I suspect Nokia and the other players (e.g. RIM) missed in the mobile OS wars. The challenge they faced at the time of the launch of the iPhone wasn't to simply build a better smart phone. Nor was it to embrace social media. It was to create the world's best (i.e. easiest to use, integrate and personalise) Do.Me platform.

The challenge then wasn't about the phone. It was to render the web browser obsolete.

The challenge was to create a new paradigm that fundamentally changed the way we experience meaning when using this technology.

The good news for Nokia, RIM and the other players (including Adobe) in this space is that, although Apple and Google have made a good start at trying to solve the problem, the reality is the challenge remains largely unresolved.

The question then becomes one of do they see the opportunity for what it is?

Somehow I suspect the answer to that question is no.

Copyright 2012 Digital Partners Pty Limited. All Rights Reserved.