From: "danny sofer" 
To: "jo walsh" 
Subject: Re: an amsterdam chapter, perhaps...
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 15:08:57 +0100

<snip>

here are the pieces:

1) i registered a handful of domains ages ago (homesite.co.uk,
travelsite.co.uk, etc.) after thinking that the areas where there was
opportunity (in a narrowly commercial sense) are in i) non-commodity items
and ii) something people spend a lot of money on. homes and holidays fulfill
both those criteria. no point having a good idea if you don't have a good
name, i thought.

2) directories and search engines. after yahoo came along and then all the
search engines it became pretty clear that being in that space of helping
people find what they want is a pretty good place to be. so, i thought: i
want to build directories and search interfaces.

3) collaboration and user-created sites. and then amazon came along and
their killer idea was letting people leave reviews on the site. more
recently, there's epinions.com. everyone's doing it. we're all critics now.
and it's not just books and commercial products it could be builders and
lawyers and teachers. everyone leaves a trail of happy and not so happy
transactions in their wake.

4) xml and distributed apps. then there's moreover.com. nice idea.
syndicated news from all over the web channelled into hundreds of different
subject areas and all available via xml. anyone with an xml parser can join
in the fun.

5) open source. ownership is an inclusive concept.

so, it's obvious: build xml interfaces to everyone's content; build search
engines that index all that content; build interfaces that allow anyone to
access that content for whatever purpose they want; build collaboration
tools to allow everyone to annotate everything; and to get it all started
build some demonstration sites (with memorable url's) that demonstrate the
principals.

so, i think my next step is to start building the tools and constructing
some demo sites. in doesn't have to be estate agents and holiday companies -
it's just that i'm lazy and these look like an easy place to start.