4 ms·

How do you get around the fact that it's entirely possible to chuck "contact info, opening hours, menus, or maybe links to social media" on a plain text file on

How do you get around the fact that it's entirely possible to chuck "contact info, opening hours, menus, or maybe links to social media" on a plain text file on a domain right now yet no small businesses are doing it and are instead going with heavy Wordpress sites? If that's what most users want and they want it bad enough to warrant a whole new protocol, then my thinking would be that it would have to provide some sort of competitive advantage. What has prevented it spreading despite this competitive advantage and why is that factor not present when it comes to adoption of your protocol?

ratww 6y ago
I think people just do what they know. Most laypeople that choose Wordpress do so because they want some editing interface. The bloated Wordpress templates are a consequence of them looking good in ThemeForest. There's no incentive for template makers to make super fast 100%-static templates, as those don't attract attention. But given the chance, site owners would replace their sites with whatever works. For instance, and a lot of local businesses where I don't have webpages anymore, but only Facebook profiles with a bunch of photos and text. Some of them even have custom domains that redirect to Facebook! Apple App Clips in iOS 14 is something similar: you don't need an App for scooters or for buying Ice Cream, so I foresee some people moving to those just because it's cheaper to make... and because customers will probably be familiar with them.
- elliottinvent 6y ago
  Yes I agree. I think small businesses go down that route because it's what everyone else does. I think the majority of small businesses don't choose Wordpress, the web designer does. I don't think most companies need a website, Facebook offers great tools to engage with customers but as a website it basically just lists key data. So all they really need a website for is to provide customers with key data.
elliottinvent 6y ago
No small businesses are publishing useful data to text files because it's not standardised, since it's not standardised there's no devices / apps / services consuming data in that format and so no incentive to store it in that way. Some businesses publish data using structured formats for the web (microdata, JSON-LD) but have not reached critical mass, other examples like .wellknown are for more technical use cases and are not that, errrr, well known. > If that's what most users want and they want it bad enough to warrant a whole new protocol, then my thinking would be that it would have to provide some sort of competitive advantage. Users want the data – they search Google (Knowledge Graph / Google Places) for it and scour websites for it – but there's no way for companies to provide the data directly to users, other than through websites. That's what NUM is – a way to do that. > What has prevented it spreading despite this competitive advantage and why is that factor not present when it comes to adoption of your protocol? It's the classic chicken and egg problem – no one stores data using method X because no one's looking for it using method X and no one's looking for data using method X because the data isn't there. We aim to overcome that by publishing millions of pieces of useful structured data to DNS. We announced NUM on 1st September and it's experimental, so there's a long road ahead.

ratww 6y ago

I think people just do what they know. Most laypeople that choose Wordpress do so because they want some editing interface. The bloated Wordpress templates are a consequence of them looking good in ThemeForest. There's no incentive for template makers to make super fast 100%-static templates, as those don't attract attention. But given the chance, site owners would replace their sites with whatever works. For instance, and a lot of local businesses where I don't have webpages anymore, but only Facebook profiles with a bunch of photos and text. Some of them even have custom domains that redirect to Facebook! Apple App Clips in iOS 14 is something similar: you don't need an App for scooters or for buying Ice Cream, so I foresee some people moving to those just because it's cheaper to make... and because customers will probably be familiar with them.

elliottinvent 6y ago
Yes I agree. I think small businesses go down that route because it's what everyone else does. I think the majority of small businesses don't choose Wordpress, the web designer does. I don't think most companies need a website, Facebook offers great tools to engage with customers but as a website it basically just lists key data. So all they really need a website for is to provide customers with key data.

elliottinvent 6y ago

No small businesses are publishing useful data to text files because it's not standardised, since it's not standardised there's no devices / apps / services consuming data in that format and so no incentive to store it in that way. Some businesses publish data using structured formats for the web (microdata, JSON-LD) but have not reached critical mass, other examples like .wellknown are for more technical use cases and are not that, errrr, well known. > If that's what most users want and they want it bad enough to warrant a whole new protocol, then my thinking would be that it would have to provide some sort of competitive advantage. Users want the data – they search Google (Knowledge Graph / Google Places) for it and scour websites for it – but there's no way for companies to provide the data directly to users, other than through websites. That's what NUM is – a way to do that. > What has prevented it spreading despite this competitive advantage and why is that factor not present when it comes to adoption of your protocol? It's the classic chicken and egg problem – no one stores data using method X because no one's looking for it using method X and no one's looking for data using method X because the data isn't there. We aim to overcome that by publishing millions of pieces of useful structured data to DNS. We announced NUM on 1st September and it's experimental, so there's a long road ahead.