Adam Jordens@littlesquare:~/

Marc Canter has penned an AlwaysOn article discussing the finer points of open API’s as they relate to today’s web and its future incarnations. It’s worth reading if you have an interest in Web 2.0ish commentary.

To provide an opinion on Marc’s question, Should they adopt these tools and standards, painfully cannibalizing their existing revenue for a new unproven concept, or should they stick with their currently lucrative model with the risk that eventually a bunch of upstarts eat their lunch?

I think that the incumbents in area’s where we’ve reached critical mass, will open up. Many will be content to let a young startup do the heavy lifting/community building before entering into an acquisition phase. The other direction I see these companies going is further opening of their traditionally walled gardens. They’ll want to add value for their existing customers so this openness will go both ways, allow others access in while facilitating interoperability with other like-minded services.

It’s with the later aspect that open standards really come into play and it will be interesting to see how it plays out. I’ve played (a bit) with Y! 360 but don’t really dig it yet. I’d like to see something truly open where I’m not forced to start yet another blog or submit data to yet another aggregating service. My data is already out there, provide a meaningful service to build on top of it, not under it.