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This is Web 2.0. You're in the process of rediscovering mashups. Before it was SOAP and REST/HTTP and now it's...well, it's still kind of REST/HTTP because MCP

This is Web 2.0. You're in the process of rediscovering mashups. Before it was SOAP and REST/HTTP and now it's...well, it's still kind of REST/HTTP because MCP is JSON-RPC. There was this brief, beautiful period where every "learn to code" book ended with a couple of chapters of how to make your app do google searches and throw the results into a word graph or something before all the big tech companies locked that sort of access down. Weirdly, I'm a little optimistic that it might work this time. AI is hot, which means that suddenly we don't care about IP anymore, and if AIs are the ones that are mostly using this protocol, providers will perhaps be in less of a rush to block everybody from doing cool things.

torginus 1y ago
They don't care about using your IP rights, I doubt it also works the other way around.
fmbb 1y ago
Web 2.0 was also hot.
madrox 1y ago
You’re totally right, and that’s why I think this era will fail. Web 2.0 failed because eventually people realized to make money they needed to serve ads, and to do that they needed to own the UI. Making it easy to exfiltrate data meant switching cost was low, too. Can’t have that when you’re trying to squeeze value out of users. Look at the evolution of the twitter API over the 2.0 era. That was entirely motivated by Twitter’s desperate need to make money through ads. Only way we avoid that future is if we figure out new business models, but I doubt that will happen. Ads are too lucrative and people too resistant to pay for things.
- calvinmorrison 1y ago
  why cant i serve ads thru my mcp?
  - vineyardmike 1y ago
    Obviously it’s possible. And just like the early internet ad networks… You can’t guarantee they’ll be shown and interpreted correct by the downstream LLM, you can’t guarantee attribution later when a user makes a purchase, you can’t collect (as much) data on users for targeting, etc The biggest ad networks today (Google, Meta) have strong first party data operations, strong first party attribution techniques, and strong targeting, either through intent (search) or profiles (meta). MCP originated ads really only threaten Google (via intent based ads), and they’re quickly moving I to owning the UX of LLMs, securing their place in this value chain.
  - CobrastanJorji 1y ago
    Because then you'd be serving ads to an LLM?
- jes5199 1y ago
  ads really aren’t all that lucrative, though, they’re just simple. I worked for a company that was trying to figure out an alternative to ad revenue (we failed) and our people did some research and the average internet user ends up being shown (if I remember correctly) like $60/month of ads, total.
  - xp84 1y ago
    That’s not surprising and is also so depressing. Imagine what the Internet would be like if there were zero ads and zero of the dark patterns that they essentially force every web site operator to engage in. And all for sixty measly bucks a month that we’d spend in microtransactions or subscriptions or whatever. :(
    - eastbound 1y ago
      It’s an average, you can’t just charge everyone in the world and have an ad-free worldwide internet. About 2 billion of internet users are probably worth 0.60$ pm while 200m are worth 600$ of ads pm.
  - madrox 1y ago
    Maybe lucrative isn’t the right word but it’s more profitable than the alternative. Call it simple but there’s only so many ways to monetize people that feel entitled to digital works and refuse to open their wallet.
- im3w1l 1y ago
  People are willing to pay for AI. Some of this money flow could be diverted to the MCP provider.
  - jfim 1y ago
    In practice it'll just mean that each MCP provider will have API tokens and it'll be even harder to lock down spending than AWS. Maybe companies will need to have a company wide system prompt to pretty please don't use the expensive APIs too much.
1659447091 1y ago
Did you mean this is Web 3.0? (semantic web) Where the goal was to have a site's data as machine readable so that could be mashed up into something new? Instead of making it easier to gather the big sites locked the bulk of their data down so it never gained widespread adoption Web 2.0 is what we mostly have now -- social, user generated content and interaction
- xp84 1y ago
  I think 3.0 as a term was taken over by those weird crypto guys with their alternative dns roots and suffixes, that literally no one uses. “Own your domain forever!!*” * Disclaimer: domain not usable for any purposes except on computers where you have root to install their alternative resolver
  - wnevets 1y ago
    > I think 3.0 as a term was taken over by those weird crypto guys that is certainly what I think of when web 3 is mentioned.
- baobun 1y ago
  Unfortunately (?) there are no real semantics in MCP so it falls short of Semantic Web.
  - 1659447091 1y ago
    Yes, but not in intent. Semantic Web (which was web 3.0 before it got meshed into web3 apparently) was meant to open up internet data for new/novel applications and uses. The article appears to be alluding to that very thing via MCP. While it does fall short of the implementation of the Semantic Web, in a way it makes it a possibility to fulfill its intent without the full buy-in of site owners. There still has to be some buy-in or allowance, otherwise it will be locked down in the near future as some comments are expecting.

torginus 1y ago

They don't care about using your IP rights, I doubt it also works the other way around.

fmbb 1y ago

Web 2.0 was also hot.

madrox 1y ago

You’re totally right, and that’s why I think this era will fail. Web 2.0 failed because eventually people realized to make money they needed to serve ads, and to do that they needed to own the UI. Making it easy to exfiltrate data meant switching cost was low, too. Can’t have that when you’re trying to squeeze value out of users. Look at the evolution of the twitter API over the 2.0 era. That was entirely motivated by Twitter’s desperate need to make money through ads. Only way we avoid that future is if we figure out new business models, but I doubt that will happen. Ads are too lucrative and people too resistant to pay for things.

calvinmorrison 1y ago
why cant i serve ads thru my mcp?
- vineyardmike 1y ago
  Obviously it’s possible. And just like the early internet ad networks… You can’t guarantee they’ll be shown and interpreted correct by the downstream LLM, you can’t guarantee attribution later when a user makes a purchase, you can’t collect (as much) data on users for targeting, etc The biggest ad networks today (Google, Meta) have strong first party data operations, strong first party attribution techniques, and strong targeting, either through intent (search) or profiles (meta). MCP originated ads really only threaten Google (via intent based ads), and they’re quickly moving I to owning the UX of LLMs, securing their place in this value chain.
- CobrastanJorji 1y ago
  Because then you'd be serving ads to an LLM?
jes5199 1y ago
ads really aren’t all that lucrative, though, they’re just simple. I worked for a company that was trying to figure out an alternative to ad revenue (we failed) and our people did some research and the average internet user ends up being shown (if I remember correctly) like $60/month of ads, total.
- xp84 1y ago
  That’s not surprising and is also so depressing. Imagine what the Internet would be like if there were zero ads and zero of the dark patterns that they essentially force every web site operator to engage in. And all for sixty measly bucks a month that we’d spend in microtransactions or subscriptions or whatever. :(
  - eastbound 1y ago
    It’s an average, you can’t just charge everyone in the world and have an ad-free worldwide internet. About 2 billion of internet users are probably worth 0.60$ pm while 200m are worth 600$ of ads pm.
- madrox 1y ago
  Maybe lucrative isn’t the right word but it’s more profitable than the alternative. Call it simple but there’s only so many ways to monetize people that feel entitled to digital works and refuse to open their wallet.
im3w1l 1y ago
People are willing to pay for AI. Some of this money flow could be diverted to the MCP provider.
- jfim 1y ago
  In practice it'll just mean that each MCP provider will have API tokens and it'll be even harder to lock down spending than AWS. Maybe companies will need to have a company wide system prompt to pretty please don't use the expensive APIs too much.

1659447091 1y ago

Did you mean this is Web 3.0? (semantic web) Where the goal was to have a site's data as machine readable so that could be mashed up into something new? Instead of making it easier to gather the big sites locked the bulk of their data down so it never gained widespread adoption Web 2.0 is what we mostly have now -- social, user generated content and interaction

xp84 1y ago
I think 3.0 as a term was taken over by those weird crypto guys with their alternative dns roots and suffixes, that literally no one uses. “Own your domain forever!!*” * Disclaimer: domain not usable for any purposes except on computers where you have root to install their alternative resolver
- wnevets 1y ago
  > I think 3.0 as a term was taken over by those weird crypto guys that is certainly what I think of when web 3 is mentioned.
baobun 1y ago
Unfortunately (?) there are no real semantics in MCP so it falls short of Semantic Web.
- 1659447091 1y ago
  Yes, but not in intent. Semantic Web (which was web 3.0 before it got meshed into web3 apparently) was meant to open up internet data for new/novel applications and uses. The article appears to be alluding to that very thing via MCP. While it does fall short of the implementation of the Semantic Web, in a way it makes it a possibility to fulfill its intent without the full buy-in of site owners. There still has to be some buy-in or allowance, otherwise it will be locked down in the near future as some comments are expecting.