2 simple ways to prepare your blog for Web 3.0

Web 3.0, or semantic web as web-experts say, is about data sharing between services and better identity system for end-users.

The idea is very simple: every user has an attention profile (APML) and should have an OpenID. For example if you are a Digg user (many other service supports now APML, this is just an example), your attention profile is situated at

http://digg.com/users/YourUserName.apml

, login and download it, then open it in a text editor and have a look. It will contain your interests in XML format. You have to log in because it’s inaccessible for strangers.
This XML file if uploaded on another service, will show, for example news which are related to your interests. It won’t show techie news if you like only anatomy.
How could this attention profile be used on blogs? I can think of two possibilities. The first is, since a blog is a personal log (or that was anno 2003, now it’s more business opportunity, or kinda), you can create your blog’s attention profile using a plugin published by Notzi. Basically it will create an XML-like APML feed containing the blog’s categories and all the tags. It can also be used to let the users who are browsing your blog to upload an APML file and then show the posts relevant to their interests. Since only a few user know what is APML and how to use it, currently is almost pointless to have such a feature on a blog. On the other hand, it can be cool because the APML enabled blog will be one of the first who supports this format and is something new and interesting.
The second possibility I can think of is to monitor the subscribed users’ clicks, what categories they accessed, what posts did they read and so on. Then based on the collected data publish for their personal use an APML file. That simple. The created attention profile then can be used on other websites to get better service, or they can mix it with APMLs gotten from other services, thus creating more precise attention profiles.
For the second possibility there’s no plugin I know of, if there is I’d be happy to know about it.

OpenID, I think the greatest innovation on the net in the past few years. While enabling APML on your blog can be optional, OpenID on the other hand should be enabled by default. More and more websites support and provides OpenID, which simplifies the end-users’ life by instead of having to remember username and password for every site they registered on, they have to remember only one: the one to their open identity.
To enable it on your WordPress blog, you simply have to install a plugin. Your blog will support OpenID both as a supporter site and as a provider, subscribers will be able to log in, common users to register as subscribers and comment using their OpenIDs.

Why to support these two formats? Well, because they get each day more and more attention on the net, they started to become standards which has to be followed. If you support them from the very beginning, you and your users can only win.

Also not forget that if Yahoo! and Verisign already adopted OpenID, Digg adopted APML. These adoptions I think means something… What about You?

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.