The Future of Web Application

Mark my words, within the next five years the business model for internet applications will evolve into one where there are more small to medium sized applications that do a very specific function very well.

Each of these applications will be able to one thing in a very efficient and simple way and the applications will be able to communicate with each other via web services. Each individual application will take some data, either directly from the user or from another application, transform the data, and then present the results to the end user directly or to another application via web services for further processing.

This will result in a horizontal supply chain where the raw material is information and applications need to be coordinated so that the user receives the most value by using a number of applications together that can be cross-marketed.

We are already seeing the beginnings of this pattern. The applications designed by 37signals ( http://www.37signals.com/ ) follow this pattern. They are purposefully designed to do less, to be simpler.

The open APIs of Ebay, Amazon, Google, Flickr, etc also follow this pattern, presenting the means by which to pass information into and out of a given application.

Very interesting stuff.